


SANCTUM AND HEALING

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 82,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt on the Dragon Age Kinkmeme. OP wanted a future/post-game fic in which Hawke and Anders are revolutionaries, but something goes wrong, and one of them is replaced by a younger version of themselves. Varric's got a serious case of writer's block, and Anders tries to find himself in a future he can't quite believe. <i>There was always something more to be done; the more you cleaned, the more you had to clean. Some people got off on that eternal servitude to bettering the world around them thing, while the prospect made others feel nauseated, right in the pit of their tainted belly.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There were too many tentacles in the depths of Kal’Hirol.

None of them was moving—not anymore—but whether moving was preferable to rotting had yet to be seen. That there were so many tentacles in one place, no matter how twisted and eternal the depths, was wretched enough. And being on cleanup duty, especially when one was a not-unsung hero, wasn’t the lap of luxury Anders had always imagined for himself post-victory.

Amaranthine was saved. Its people were rebuilding their city. Vigil’s Keep had managed to hold against nigh unbeatable odds; new champions were born in those fires, forged in those battles, and new tales were spread—to cozy firesides as winter approached Ferelden, to fill taprooms with laughter and gossip and toast-spilled ale. It wasn’t just the lap of luxury Anders could have been enjoying: there were the laps of tavern-wenches, of handsome keep soldiers, laps he could rest his head upon when he’d had too much to drink and the Crown and Lion got all fuzzy and trembly and swoopy, his body too high up from the distant floor.

Those were the laps Anders wanted. Those were the laps he deserved.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t laps for him now. Plenty of them. But they were pink and jiggly, not warm and friendly—old broodmother laps, the ones they’d left behind after dealing with the place for the first time.

Funny no one had thought to haul one back as a souvenir. And now they lingered, festering, like all great Warden victories.

‘Wardens.’ Anders sighed, lifting the tip of a tentacle with his staff and cringing when it flobbered back onto the blood-streaked stone below. It wiggled in place like a bowl of Feastday jelly before it slithered back through its hole, disappearing with a dull thud into the shadowy pit below. ‘I didn’t realize we were so… _messy_.’

 _Pillaged countryside,_ the Warden Commander would have said—if he wasn’t off making appearances instead of hacking at broodmothers. _Razed farmland, crumbling walls, darkspawn in the capital, and the Blackmarsh._ The whole point of the Wardens was to make a mess worse, to recognize how big the mess was so they finally could start cleaning it up again.

For some, that could be an overwhelming feat—especially when they realized there was no end to the messes of Thedas, not as wonderful as wonders, just awe-inspiring in the _disturbing_ sort of way.

There was always something more to be done; the more you cleaned, the more you had to clean. Some people got off on that eternal servitude to bettering the world around them thing, while the prospect made others feel nauseated, right in the pit of their tainted belly.

The distant clang of Oghren’s battleaxe or warhammer or dwarven skullcrusher—Anders still didn’t know what it was, not even after all this time, since Oghren never kept his his stories straight—echoed over the high cavern walls. They’d been carved once, with great care, by the long-dead dwarves who still haunted each passageway. So much time, so much effort, so much personality—and now the engraved stone was crumbling, overrun by fleshy sacs and bulbous roots, splattered with blood. It was enjoyed by exactly no one, merely the setting for grave injustices and ritual horror, the degradation of too many bodies to count, and a whole host of festering tentacles.

Anders peered down a nearby corner, sidling away from Oghren’s hard work. Dwarves were made for mincing the broodmothers into a fine chop to transport them higher up in the tunnels—then burn them, as if they could do anything to purify the place—but not mages. Maybe, if Anders was as consistently drunk as Oghren, there might have been some joy in the task, or sweat, or purpose, or strength.

Instead, the cool whispers of a quiet, shadowy spot in which to lurk and breathe and think was far more appealing. Even if there were ghosts, sliding down hallways and calling to one another, unable to forget the stone they loved, the lost possibilities of a long-squandered life.

Anders sat on a stone slab, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. Listening to Oghren chopping up broodmothers was hard, sweaty work, and there wasn’t any relish to be found in it, no story Anders could tell himself about how it would all be funny later. He heard the chittering of harmless, intangible things, the echoes of skullcrushers past instead of skullcrushers present, and as he tried not to remember the childers and the childer grubs, he realized it was all so customary now—the sort of thing that happened to a Warden on a regular basis.

He never thought ghosts would lose all meaning, but after the fourteenth haunted thaig, surprise was a tricky emotion to muster.

One of the pale memory-bodies trotted through him; it felt like a phantom sneeze, a bit of dust catching in his nose and his lungs, the tensing of muscle and twitching of nostrils that never fulfilled their promise. He used his sweaty handkerchief to rub the stretch of sensitive, stubbled skin between his nose and his upper lip; he regretted it when he smelled his own stale sweat in the fabric, though at least it wasn’t ancient, beaten, hungry stone, or the recent carnage of smelly darkspawn.

‘Watch where you’re going,’ Anders murmured, still trying to rally a shock or two, to find the joy somewhere in the absurd. ‘I know I’m in the way and everything, but walking _through_ a person when he’s taking a breather—now that’s just rude.’

The conversations continued behind him, deep voices flickering in and out the same way a fire guttered on the open road, flames hunted by the wind. The outlines of their bodies, too, trembled and blinked and shimmered like a weakened arcane shield, and Anders watched them converse, gesture, point and sigh.

Finally, he managed a shiver, all the way from the base of his spine to the nape of his neck: a single, creepy bolt of selfish horror.

‘Apology accepted,’ Anders said.

They were discussing building—what else did dwarves discuss, dead or alive?—and most of the words had been swallowed by time; Anders still felt like he was eavesdropping, pretending to look the other way while he listened in. It was comforting as much as it was depressing to imagine conversations had, over and over, important to no one else but the echoing voices that carried them.

Maybe it might make them feel good to know—if they still felt anything at all—that _someone_ was listening.

The conversation turned to an argument soon enough; Anders swept the room while he listened in on each musty corner and each shifting shadow. There were mushrooms growing out of the rock, hearty stock fed by scant mud and childer offal, and stone slabs and stone columns and stone doorways. The only bit of not-stone was a twisted heap of unpolished metal, glass glimmering for a moment—not reflecting but trapping the light off an arcane body before the ghosts swallowed it whole.

They finished their argument, a trailing wave arcing smoke-light through the stale air, and left in separate directions, disappearing beyond stone walls. Then, they returned to start again from the beginning, and it was Anders turn to walk through them, to run his hand over the tarnished frame, thumb against the broken glass.

A hidden shard sliced his finger.

‘Ow!’ he said, words swallowed up by the stony rafters.

‘Get to…building…’ the memory of a dwarf—or a dwarf’s memory—ordered behind him, quieter than a whisper now. The glass flashed once, and Kal’Hirol got all fuzzy and trembly and swoopy, Anders’s body too high up from the distant floor.

*

The earth was shaking when Anders jolted awake, slamming his elbow against something sturdy in the unexpected dark. His elbow gave; the something sturdy didn’t. He cringed, body curling in on itself to ward off further injury, to protect his vulnerable innards from the lash of a resurrected tentacle, the sting of its barbed tip and the squelch of its sticky suckers. The familiar length of his staff was pressed uncomfortably against his thigh, half-pinned by his body, and when Anders struggled to sit up, his hands found splintered wood instead of the hewn rock-face and squishy flesh of Kal’Hirol proper.

The ground was moving beneath him the same way it had when the broodmothers woke to the scent of Grey Wardens, when the taint in both of them called out to each other. Anders struggled to fit the pieces together, watching long shadows slither over his surroundings. Dim circles of light dappled the floor and his legs, like a pile of good coin shaped by sunbeams.

Anders brushed the stray wisps of hair from his forehead, drawing in a deep breath of clean air, untainted by broodmother breeding pits.

There was no reason to panic yet—or every reason, but either way, the effect was the same. Anders reminded himself of the wide array of experience he had when it came to falling unconscious in one place, then waking with no memory of where he was the next morning—especially these days, now that he was drinking alongside Oghren.

He brought his index finger to his mouth, the cut still tacky with blood, and sucked until the hurt faded, even if it didn’t fade away.

If he had to venture his best guess, it seemed he was riding in the back of a covered wagon, wedged between a few round barrels and something else, something painfully solid, hidden beneath a careful swath of thick, stained canvas. The Warden Commander was practical sometimes, funny others, never the same man twice; he might have ordered Anders back to Vigil’s Keep at last, to share in the drinking and celebrating, sparing him the long trek across the Amaranthine countryside.

A mage was better suited to those tasks than hauling dense darkspawn corpses through a dwarven thaig. Honestly, Anders didn’t know what the man had been thinking when he sent him in the first place. It was more of a job made for men like Nathaniel—men who didn’t allow the bulk and weight of their noses to interfere with their ability to stride into all sorts of malodorous places.

One of the shadows shifted in back of the caravan. Anders squinted at it, hard enough to focus between the shafts of sunlight; he made out a tall, buckled boot and a pair of legs, attached to someone who’d folded himself into a nap up in the front. Bright eyes pierced the gloom, and Anders realized he was being watched.

It’d been a long time since anyone had gotten the drop on him. Darkspawn he heard coming from a mile away, and even dwarven ghosts couldn’t keep their tongues from wagging long enough to mount an ambush. Templars were taking a break, for however long it lasted, and again—‘surprise’ was on holiday somewhere else, in fancy Orlais or sunny Antiva, visiting _other_ people.

‘Hello,’ Anders said, with more good cheer than he felt. A joint in his lower back was throbbing from his rough slumber in the cart, a day of picking through rubble and blighted guts followed by an awkward period of apparent unconsciousness. He was going to have a word with the Warden Commander about their driver and his methods when they made it back to Vigil’s Keep. For now, he could only rub his back warily, untangling his limbs, nursing a cramp in his thigh. ‘Lovely day for a ride through the Coastlands, isn’t it? Pity we don’t have a view.’

‘Hawke,’ the man with the boots said, reaching up to tug at the loosened ties that separated the driver’s seat from the back of their wagon.

‘Something in your throat?’ Anders asked. ‘Maker’s _blessing_ on you, then. …And your throat, too, I suppose.’

‘ _Hawke,_ ’ the man repeated, ignoring Anders to deal ignobly with his affliction. The afternoon light spilled over his features as he leaned forward, revealing ruddy cheeks and a narrow chin—the sort of face that was too gentle for a soldier’s, but too open and straightforward for anything else. He was wearing a simple cotton shirt with a stitched leather vest—not a look Anders had seen worn around Ferelden much, but unfamiliar fashion was a secondary concern, just below an _unfamiliar face_. ‘He’s awake now.’

‘I should hope so,’ Anders said. The Warden Commander always hinted it was part of Anders’s charm that he’d never been put off by the prospect of having a conversation with himself. Considering the company he kept, it was practically a requirement if he ever wanted to get any information. ‘It’d be irresponsible to fall asleep at the helm of this charming little vessel. Say, are you another Warden from Orlais? You don’t _sound_ Orlesian, but I don’t like to make assumptions about people until I get to know them. Or keep them in wagons next to a bunch of barrels. Seems rude, don’t you think?’

Someone muttered a short, sharp phrase from outside the wagon. Friendly banter appeared to be out of the question, at least while they were still on the move.

The ruddy not-Orlesian let out a sigh, releasing the canvas flap and letting the darkness retake them. Anders’s fingers twitched, longing to spark a light, to banish the shadows to the far corners of the wagon, but there was no way of knowing what the barrels contained—broodmother oil or dwarven explosives or whatever else it was they might be transporting.

‘I’m Keran,’ Anders’s new friend said, drumming his thumb against his knee. ‘I’m not a Warden. And—not one of you, either.’

‘Not one of me?’ Anders rubbed the grip of his staff, where the wood was worn into five uneven indentations. ‘You mean…a charming rogue who can’t hold his whiskey?’

Keran’s breath punctuated the silence, somewhere between a startled laugh and another sigh. It never made it to either, too quiet for anything conclusive, and it disappeared amidst the clattering of the wheels over the uneven road, the jumping and jostling of the boards Anders couldn’t brace himself against long enough to regain his equilibrium.

‘If that’s what you prefer to call it,’ Keran said at last. Anders couldn’t read his voice, simple and easy enough, without any of the tension held by the man riding up front. His words might have been outdone by all the other noises, but his tone made his mood clear as day after a jaunt through the Deep Roads, impossible to miss as the first sign of morning.

‘I don’t like traveling either,’ Anders said, leaning back between two barrels and the canvas, little bruises already forming all over his shoulder-blades. His teeth rattled, molars against molars inside his head, while his belly flopped up into his ribs with each pronounced bump, his bootheels digging into the boards so hard it made them squeak. ‘Got a bit of a delicate stomach—all this banging around doesn’t suit it.’

‘It won’t be much longer now,’ Keran replied.

Anders steepled his fingers over his knees, staff tucked between them, the time-polished head pressed into his cheek. When he rubbed his jaw against it, he smelled elfroot and char, from the last pod of childer grubs they’d run into, the fire that kept their scuttling bodies back.

‘Good thing I slept for most of the journey,’ Anders said. ‘That way, we didn’t have to play any _Warden traveling games._ The Commander taught me all the best ones, but _some_ people have the gall to call them tedious.’

Keran made that sound again—he wasn’t the first to be overcome by fits of concerned and aggravated grunting in Anders’s presence—and the wagon wheels screeched to a halt, the barrels sliding out of place, the canvas falling half-way off its hidden prize.

It was a writing desk, short and squat, and therefore probably dwarven-made. It looked like one of the presents the Warden Commander favored, on every day of the year including Feastday, handing them off to his companions when they least expected it. A scarf or a kitten or a sextant or an earring—or a writing desk, apparently, for someone with short legs and a penchant for reading.

Anders assumed it was for Sigrun. Oghren would only use it as a pillow, and the bristles of his beard would scour the polish and ruin the craftsmanship.

‘Maybe now the ride’s over, he’ll be a little more friendly,’ Keran added, ducking by Anders on his way out of the wagon-back. He tugged the leather cords with a quick flick of his wrist, opening the flap and hopping free; Anders heard his boots land on solid ground, and he held out his hand for assistance, to make the ungainly leap without falling on his own staff.

It wasn’t the same as falling on a sword or a dagger, but still—being skewered by anything was never pretty.

Strong fingers closed around Anders’s in the cool, fresh air. Anders held tight to them, trying not to muss his hair as he ducked low beneath the wagon-cover, but his ankle buckled under his weight unexpectedly when he caught sight of narrow, pale stretches of late-afternoon sunlight, streaming in over the neighboring mountain range.

White-capped peaks, snowy and chill; a brisk breeze that didn’t smell of the Waking Sea; hard-packed earth beneath Anders’s feet instead of soft, forgiving, _Fereldan_ mud-banks; and a twisted ankle that twinged as Anders blinked, still clinging to staff in one hand and fingers in the other, and holding too tightly to each.

‘Er,’ Anders said.

He turned to ask Keran a few pointed questions—about kidnapping; about fresh, ruddy faces and appearances that were too deceiving; about the Warden Commander’s love of pranks equal only to his love of unprompted gifting.

But Keran was hauling the desk out of the wagon, chapped hands rougher than the one Anders held—which was smooth save for a few mage-calluses on one side of the thumb, streaks of elfroot and polish staining the nails. A cloak and a cowl completed the look, shadowy as it was, a dark-furred pauldron streaked with riding dust, and Anders felt an answering pulse of arcane promise, the sort of handshake only a fellow mage could offer.

He couldn’t see the man’s face beneath the fall of his hood.

As if the situation wasn’t sinister enough.

‘Am I being kidnapped?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m not the Warden Commander—I’m not anybody, really—just a man with a staff and the right of conscription. You know, all I wanted was a simple lap to rest my head in—is that so much to ask?’

‘Not a kidnapping,’ the man told him. ‘You’d be a little more tied up and a little less free to use your staff if it was.’

‘Er,’ Anders said again.

There was no real way to argue with that brand of logic. Someone who bundled a captive in ropes, clapped him in manacles and threw him in the back of their cart was obviously a kidnapper—or a templar.

Someone who _didn’t_ take pains to separate a mage and his staff must have had a different agenda.

But at least kidnappers were predictable—and templars, too. It wasn’t reassuring to realize you had no idea what a man wanted, much less what his face looked like under the shadows of his cowl.

‘Listen,’ Anders said, shooting for ‘friendly’ and landing somewhere in the vicinity of ‘perturbed.’ ‘Whatever you’ve heard—I’m actually quite happy with the Wardens. Ah—well, maybe _happy_ isn’t the word, exactly, but I’m not looking to join your merry band of mercenaries, or…whatever this is. Traveling theater troupe? Nomadic school for minstrels? I _am_ a dab hand at the lute, but I simply haven’t the time to be teaching others, what with all the blighting and the broodmothering and the tentacling—’

The cowled man snorted. He didn’t follow it up by spitting on Anders’s boots, which seemed like permission to continue, if only in a roundabout fashion.

‘…So, you can see where this recruitment tactic—while imaginative and also flattering—is simply wasted on the likes of me,’ Anders concluded. ‘You’re better off trying someone like Oghren. Or _Velanna_ —she seems like the unscrupulous sort. I can tell you where she sleeps and everything. _She’s_ the mage you want; I’ve never met such a bloodthirsty elf in all my life.’

‘Keran,’ the cowled man said, with a snap of his bare fingers. When he turned away from Anders, his face slipped halfway free of the hood. Pale light illuminated his broken nose; there was something like blood splashed across its bridge, and his chin was framed by a dark beard, tucked beneath his furred pauldrons, and half hidden behind a tarnished steel bevor. ‘Take the desk in to Varric, would you? You know how he likes to complain when he’s made to wait.’

‘Yes, Hawke,’ Keran said, the writing desk already braced in his two strong arms. Anders took a moment to appreciate them, just before he reminded himself now wasn’t the time, nor was it the place. ‘Right away.’

Keran’s path led him away, down a narrow incline leading into the foothills. It seemed a magnificent feat of optimism to assume he wasn’t going to get wedged halfway down the path—but Anders could already tell that this Hawke fellow wasn’t the sort to appreciate helpful input, quick jibes and suggestions that the Warden Commander always took into account.

‘Good lad,’ Hawke said, though Keran was far beyond his hearing when he said it. He slid his fingers free; Anders’s hand felt stiff and empty without them.

‘Don’t tell me you brought me here for heavy lifting.’ Anders rubbed his sweaty palm against his side. ‘If that’s the case, you’ll _definitely_ want Velanna. Little elves, big constitutions—you know what they always say.’

Hawke didn’t miss a beat. ‘ _You_ can come with me.’

‘Can I?’ Anders asked. ‘I’ll venture a guess and say that’s more of a command than an invitation?’

‘Good guess,’ Hawke said. ‘Good venture.’

Anders passed his staff from his left hand to his right, fingers finding the familiar grooves in the smooth wood. Holding it, he felt the same throbbing promise of arcane frost he always had, buried at the heart of his staff where the magic flowed most freely. Despite the chill in the air, prickling down underneath Anders’s robes and raising a host of gooseflesh, the ice felt warmer than anything else, a flush at the answer to his call.

It was a good weapon. The Warden Commander had picked it up in a crypt, then tossed it mid-battle to Anders, over the heads of a few stray skeleton archers. If he could loot the undead while fighting off their monstrous hordes, then it wasn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe the Warden Commander could also track down one of his missing brothers-in-arms.

It was a slim hope, but Anders wound it around his wrist like a noblewoman’s favor, keeping it close to calm his skittering pulse.

Then, he followed Hawke—who was already stalking up the trail, his cloak and furs nearly hidden amidst the shattered gray shale-stones.

Behind them, the dusty white ox that had pulled their cart let out a mournful bellow. As Anders limped through the twisting rocks, favoring his bad ankle, he didn’t think he’d ever encountered such a perceptive beast of burden.

*

 _Hawke_ seemed an unlikely name for the man who’d plucked Anders out of the Deep Roads and landed him somewhere in the high mountains. He had no talons, and the hood of his cowl was soft and rounded, with no sharp point to mistake for a beak. When he drew it down at last, Anders was met with a pair of lean, brown eyes, and a beard that was more salt than pepper, framing a gaunt face beneath sharp cheekbones. The streak of blood across his nose was faded like an old stain, while a clever trick of the flickering lanterns revealed silver in Hawke’s hair, threading bright through his thick bangs and glinting at his temples.

In fact, he looked more like a grizzled mountain wolf than a bird of prey. When he tugged his cloak from around his shoulders, Anders glimpsed a red tattoo nestled in the curve of his bare upper arm, the muscle flexing as he clenched and unclenched his fist.

It was the sort of gesture a man indulged in when he was nursing an old injury. A broken wrist or shattered fingers, or simply an ache in the ball of the thumb born from too much hard work, clinging to a weapon for years past retirement, pain that swelled and shuddered the night before a heavy rain. Joints were tricky like that—just as tricky as not-kidnappers—and when Anders heard the ball crack, thumb pressed stiffly into Hawke’s other palm, the urge to heal it flared like a warning signal on the eve of battle, just before enemy forces crested a keep’s dwarven walls.

But sympathy for an unknown—who might as well have been an enemy—was a hard and narrow feeling to maintain, and Anders had no reason to nurture it into something broader or better defined. The man before him said he wasn’t a kidnapper, which meant he was either something more or less sinister: a Warden fanatic, a revolutionary, or an Imperium slaver.

Hawke didn’t look like the last, and there wasn’t much use for slaves in the mountains, anyway. If this had been about slavery, they’d be on a boat bound for Tevinter already, Anders vomiting onto his fellows in the galley, chained wrist to wrist and sweating with fever.

Here, the slim mountain winds howled outside Hawke’s tent, billowing the canvas inward. Anders’s skin was hot, yes, but with uncertainty rather than with communicable diseases.

Still, the luck Anders caught and kept for himself ended up being a double-edged weapon, sharpened on both sides, impossible to catch without personal injury—a sacrifice of one piece of gratitude for another, equally potent gripe. He was happy not to be manacled and unarmed, stuck between two angry city elves, rocked by waves in a sudden squall, heading toward auction—but he wasn’t happy to be lost in a mountain range, chilly beneath robes meant for warmer weather, quick winds creeping in under the tent and rifling the feathers at his shoulders.

‘Hungry?’ Hawke asked, tossing his cloak over the back of a homely chair—hand-made by the looks of it, and too small for the garment that currently obscured it, much less for the man it belonged to. ‘I know I am. Traveling on the open road always piques my appetite.’

‘ _And_ it makes you cranky,’ Anders added, still standing, between a narrow desk and its collection of maps and scrolls, letters and seals and red sealing wax. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Hawke picked up a few mapping instruments and set them down again, stiff hands roving over an assortment of unfamiliar tools, an empty plate and scuffed goblet. ‘Keran,’ Anders added, only a little guilty about betraying the man, kind and handsome as he was. Despite that, he was a part of all this, complicit in the crime Anders still didn’t understand, and one good turn always deserved another. ‘Keran told me that. I’m not a blood mage or a mind-reader, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘What are you, then?’ Hawke asked, eyes suddenly sharp and keen, picking up light reflected from those harmless metal bits and bobs on his desk. He braced his hands on the edges and leaned forward and Anders was as intimidated as he was annoyed—not just by the piercing gaze, which didn’t let up for an instant, not even mitigated by the occasional blink, but by the presumption, the randomness, the possibility that all this hadn’t happened for good reason. There was his luck again, knocking at the door—or ducking under the tent-flap—and Hawke was looking to him for answers, instead of the other way around. It was so unfair—but what _wasn’t_ , these days? ‘Where did you come from? Why are you _here_?’

‘If you mean that in the cosmic sense, I can’t say I know yet,’ Anders replied, realizing he’d stepped backward only after his bootheel dug into a soft throw-rug, right beside a tidy bedroll. ‘But if you mean in the other, more specific sense, I should probably remind you that I’m here because _you_ kidnapped me.’

‘We’re not kidnappers,’ Hawke reminded him. ‘We’re the opposite, in fact.’

‘This doesn’t feel like the opposite of a kidnapping,’ Anders said. ‘It feels like the opposite of the opposite of that.’

‘No.’ Hawke’s fingers dug into the desk; Anders saw, even from a distance, there were other such score-marks in the wood, from pens that dug too deeply, or hands that clutched too hard. ‘I told you; it’s the opposite.’

‘The opposite of the opposite of the opposite?’ Anders asked.

‘Ah,’ Hawke said. ‘I see it now. You _are_ a demon.’

It wasn’t the first time someone had drawn the same conclusion; Anders could only assume it wouldn’t be the last. Hawke’s jaw was tight, the furrows in his brow deepening—but too much fresh mountain air and stark mountain wind and bleak mountain living would do that to a man, grooving more wrinkles than laugh-lines around his mouth and eyes or turning him gray before his time.

‘Clever to hide yourself in a ditch, though,’ Hawke continued, leaning back, glancing down to inspect a fingernail. There was a staff in the far corner of the tent, but he didn’t reach for it or look its way; something about his posture, the familiar cant of a mage’s shoulders when he was contemplating a fireball or two, made Anders take notice of the weapon, which in turn made his palms run sweaty and his throat run dry. ‘Have us pick you up, take you in—I’d no idea it was so boring in the Fade. And I’ll tell you this—the Vimmark Mountains are _no_ place for a party. You’d be better off trying Orlais. Plenty of cheeses there, this time of year.’

Not a slaver, Anders thought. Not a Warden fanatic. Possibly a revolutionary, but most likely a madman.

Anyone who chose to live in the mountains when they could have done so twice as nicely and just as cheap over a dirty taproom had to be.

‘This is getting awkward,’ Anders began, licking his lips. ‘I’m not a demon. I’d be much better-dressed, if I was. …And I’d probably smell nicer, too.’

‘Phew,’ said a voice from outside, deep as the inner hollow of an old skin-drum. A dwarf passed under the tent-flap, dressed in fine leathers and red silk. He had the square head of a mabari warhound, and warm eyes set beneath his thick brows; unlike the dwarves Anders knew—Sigrun included in that scant number—his chin was bare, but what hair he lacked on his face was more than accounted for on his naked chest. ‘Speaking as a concerned eavesdropper, it’s always _reassuring_ to hear Hawke hasn’t started picking up _demons_ by the side of the road.’

‘Varric,’ Hawke said, in tones of warning clear enough that even Anders recognized them.

‘He’s a sucker for a cute face, though,’ the dwarf—Varric—explained, throwing Anders a wink.

It wasn’t the sort of compliment dwarves normally paid him, but then the dwarves Anders knew didn’t go about with gold hoops wound through their ears and chains at their throat, more jewelry than armor, with bare jaws broad in equally broad daylight.

‘ _My_ face?’ Anders lifted his fingers to his cheek, scratching at the unshaven stubble there. What with all the Wardening he’d been doing lately—and most of it underground or locked in epic siege against marauding hordes of darkspawn—he hadn’t found the time to shave. When you were hairier up-top than the nearest dwarf, you knew your personal hygiene was suffering in favor of heroics.

Never a good sign.

‘Dearest Varric: how many times have I told you—’ Hawke began. Anders was grateful for Varric’s presence, that someone else had entered to take the weight of Hawke’s gaze off his shoulders. He might have accepted half the yoke by accident, but Varric seemed a square sort, made to bear dire burdens like all his fellow dwarves, who were built for more than just swinging anvils and blowing belches.

‘Can’t knock on a tent-flap, Hawke,’ Varric said, holding up a blunt hand. He mimed rapping his knuckles against the thick, dirty canvas. Outside, the wind howled as it whistled through the hills. ‘You’d never hear it. I’m good, but I’m no miracle worker.’

An uneven smile found its way across Anders’s face. There was something about the dwarf’s straightforward nature—coupled with a lack of distinct smells—that made him feel more at ease. Maybe it was the way he refused to balk, even when he knew he was caught like a halla in Hawke’s predatory stare. Anders had used the same tactic when he’d first met the Warden Commander; it was best to judge a man by the ease of the company he kept.

If they didn’t look starved or beaten or terrified—just friendly, weather-worn, fondly weary—then chances were the leader in question wasn’t a downright evil person, even if he _was_ insane.

‘Right,’ Hawke said. He rubbed a weary hand over his beard. Anders listened to the soft scrape of short hairs where they scuffed against his palm. ‘Well, as you can see, you’re interrupting a private meeting. Funny how you _always_ manage that.’

‘Me and my bad timing,’ Varric agreed, with a shake of his square head. ‘And here I thought you wanted me to tell you first: the elf’s back. He took a little detour through Wildervale to shake off Choirboy’s royal train, but it only threw him a couple of days off schedule.’

Hawke’s eyes flicked toward Anders. Anders looked back at Hawke, as though the secret to parsing Varric’s curious pronouncement could be found in the sunken lines above his brow or the hard set of his mouth. It was code; it had to be. _The elf’s back_ and _Choirboy’s royal train_ ; _the hawk swoops at midnight_ and _the anxious apostate aches ardently_ —there had to be some way to translate it, but Anders wasn’t as good at deciphering those things as he was at making them up.

‘Shit.’ Hawke was the first to break their staring contest. He pressed his thumb into the delicate skin around his eyes, hard enough to make Anders wince. Then, all at once, he was moving, plucking his cloak off the hobbled chair and fastening the battered tin clasp around his throat. ‘Weeks of silence, Varric. _Weeks_ of waiting in the Vimmark Mountains with nothing to show for it but a bad back and Keran’s peeling sunburn, and now everything’s got to happen at once. I don’t suppose you feel like explaining _why_ that is?’

Anders didn’t have to look to feel Varric’s eyes on him. Maybe there was something on his face, or an embarrassing rip in his robes that revealed his smalls. Anders patted his skirts, but found nothing that might serve as an explanation for why he suddenly felt like the prize goose at a Feastday supper, all trussed up and gleaming in the torchlight.

If they kept staring, he was going to develop a complex.

Finally, Varric cleared his throat and looked away; Anders wondered what secrets his face held, a new code even harder to crack, a grin so much more deceptive than any tight-jawed frown.

‘When it rains, it pours, Hawke,’ Varric said, reaching up to pat him on the back. ‘Or as they say in Orzammar: when it rains, you’d better move your ass, because the entire thaig’s about to collapse.’

‘Cheerful.’ Hawke reached out as if to take his staff, but it was _Anders_ he touched instead, strong hand clasping his forearm. ‘You— _you_ come with me.’

‘If I was a demon,’ Anders added, feeling the beginnings of a pout coming on, ‘I _don’t_ think I’d take very kindly to being dragged about like a sack of potatoes.’

‘Lucky for us you were so clear, then,’ Hawke said. The daylight hit his face like the sun setting against an old cliff-side, illuminating his sharp features; they looked like they’d been chiseled from the same hard rock that surrounded them, a Fereldan face if ever Anders saw one. ‘You’re not a demon. But I’m not letting you out of my sight, either.’

‘Don’t take it too hard, Blondie,’ Varric said, bringing up the rear. ‘There’s some people out there who’d sell their mothers for a private audience with Hawke.’

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric tells a few stories; Anders has a hard time believing him.

The camp was smaller than the sort the Warden Commander liked to keep, and he preferred traveling with only a few of his closest allies—friends, as he called them; any port in a storm, and any companion in a Blight. They ran into no one on their way, past a scarce collection of tents, pitched in the shadow of the mountains proper. _The Vimmark Mountains_ , Anders didn’t have to remind himself, which last he checked weren’t in Ferelden but on the other side of the Waking Sea, deeper inland of the Free Marches than Kirkwall. An unpleasant place, as far as Anders was concerned, with all sorts of rumors swirling around its practices and its Circle—but anywhere known more commonly as _The City of Chains_ wasn’t high on Anders’s vacationing list.

Ferelden was bad enough, getting worse the closer you were to Lake Calenhad.

Anders didn’t think it was possible to sleep through an entire boat trip and the not-insubstantial wagon ride that came after. It might have been the work of a demon, or the fault of an angry talking darkspawn bent on vengeance, or one of the Warden Commander’s more elaborate practical jokes. The only constant was how little sense it made, but at least Anders had someone to follow, keeping pace with Varric’s steady bootfalls as Hawke lead the way. Both of them acted together in easy tandem, as smoothly as the Warden Commander and Oghren—because they were old friends, and because they knew each other so thoroughly. It wasn’t the sort of dynamic you could pick up without doing hard time for it, living through even harder training—and it would have been comforting, if it wasn’t all so foreign.

Anders never thought he’d miss Oghren’s lumbering gait, the creak and burnish of his blood-streaked armor or any of the flies that buzzed around his head and beard, any of his dwarven epithets involving dangly bits and superfluous hacking.

‘After you,’ Varric said, the very picture of noble etiquette.

But he was doing it for a purpose more than politic—to keep Anders, the unknown variable in this camp of hoodlums and wild-men, sandwiched neatly between him and Hawke, where both of them could keep a clear eye on the wild card.

So he wouldn’t pull anything _demony_.

If he could have, he would have, a brisk ice storm to shake things up and make his escape, a puff of smoke and a wicked cackle for the sake of legitimization. If he hadn’t been so curious about the elf and Choirboy’s royal train—or so enamored of keeping his head comfortably on his shoulders—he would’ve done it, all while hoping the demon theory kept Hawke and Varric and Keran and the elf and Choirboy off his heels, at least until he could find the nearest Wardening outpost. Assuming there _was_ one. There had to be, even in the so-called Free Marches.

The tent flap lifted above Anders’s head as Hawke held it open, and Anders did the same for Varric, the dizzy simplicity of those thoughtful actions making even less sense in context. There were still no manacles, but Anders felt them all the same, and though his captors still let him keep his staff it hindered more than it helped: clutched in his palm and cramping fingers, which were already aching with the cold.

Inside the tent, an elf was waiting—a real one, and not a chest full of lyrium or some other smuggled goods that might need a coded nickname to avoid being reclaimed. One sharp elbow rested on an equally sharp knee, but there was balance and poise in his posture. When Hawke entered, the elf stood.

Like all elves, there was no way of determining his age, smooth skin and scrolled markings and no wrinkles save for the one pressed deep above the bridge of his nose. The white hair didn’t make it any easier than the clear green eyes beneath, a gaze that focused on Hawke first and without apparent restraint.

‘You are…still alive,’ the elf said, in deep tones. The lines of white _vallaslin_ on his chin and throat flickered just once.

Maybe it was a trick of the mountain sunlight.

‘So are you,’ Hawke replied.

‘Yet with each passing meeting, the likelihood ever dwindles,’ the elf concluded.

Anders felt more like a trespasser than ever, standing with Varric beside the flap and outside the action, and when Anders looked his way, the dwarf shrugged.

‘Can’t make this stuff up,’ he said. ‘So to answer your question: yeah. They _really_ talk like this.’

‘So the elf’s…actually back?’ Anders asked. It had been too long since he’d spoken, and he was starting to forget the sound of his own voice. ‘Just like you said… And here I thought that was supposed to mean something else—something you didn’t want a stranger to understand.’

‘What witchcraft is this?’ the elf asked, his voice pitched deeper than before, though Anders hadn’t thought such a change was possible.

‘Oh, yes.’ Hawke stepped aside, gesturing one handed, and Anders felt those invisible chains tighten, the ones that always gave a quiet tug whenever the Warden Commander’s travels took them too close to the Circle Tower. The elf was back, and he had a sizable weapon _on_ his back, sharp spikes of armor at his shoulders, old leather worn down by battle and by blood. He didn’t look happy about this new development. ‘Fenris—meet our demon.’

‘For the last time,’ Anders said, ‘I am _not_ a demon.’

‘And we _want_ to believe you, Blondie,’ Varric said. Hawke twitched at the name, just the slightest of starts, more a shiver of his furs than anything. ‘That’d make life a whole lot easier for us—and when you’re living in tents on the far side of the Vimmark Mountains, you learn to go _looking_ for ways to make your life easier.’

‘I can imagine,’ Anders said. Hawke’s tent wasn’t the sort kept by a man void-bent on living an easy life. There were piles of furs on his bed instead of pillows, and that said everything.

‘Don’t suppose you’d oblige us by telling us what you _are,_ then,’ Varric said, shifting in the doorway, illuminated by a narrow shaft of light. Braced on his back was an enormous weapon—they were all about weapons on backs in this place—that glinted just as golden as his chest hair; it looked like a modified crossbow, and Sigrun would have loved every inch of it. ‘Just to make life easier for us. And for you, too, while you’re at it. Doesn’t that sound like a _nice_ arrangement?’

‘I’m…a Grey Warden.’ Anders sniffed, licking the chapped corner of his lip. ‘And…I’m a mage.’

Every shadow in Fenris’s smaller tent seemed to house a waiting templar—though they’d have to be curled up like cats in order to conceal themselves effectively.

And they’d never manage it with all that armor.

But it was Fenris who scoffed—and only Fenris, without a host or army of sun-shielders, making a tart noise with his tongue against the backs of his teeth.

‘Hardly a difference,’ he muttered.

‘Ahem,’ Hawke said.

‘Only _one_ of our present company excluded,’ Fenris replied.

Varric heaved a punctured sort of sigh, the sound filling the silent spaces between them. Being the outsider in the face of such easy camaraderie felt almost _worse_ than being an unwanted demon, tossed into the fray to tempt and seduce the nearest graying mage. Whoever these people were, they’d been working together for a long time—even longer than the Warden Commander and his ramshackle crew, though that wasn’t saying much. Anders couldn’t expect to know everyone when a new companion showed up every two weeks, shattering the pre-existing dynamics, all while inhabiting decaying bodies or calling on ancient spirit magic to turn the trees against you.

‘I’m a mage, you’re a mage,’ Anders said. ‘The dwarf has no beard, the elf is back—I don’t see that it’s _such_ a big deal. Can’t we all just…get along?’

It was Hawke’s turn to sigh, before he seated himself on the ground, carefully setting aside another hand-carved chair. This one, Anders saw, had three legs instead of four, and someone had taken pains to chisel an awkward-looking ‘F’ into its back. It was Varric who took his seat there, though Anders could feel the dwarf’s eyes lingering on him—just as he could feel the sight of the mechanized crossbow, also lingering, should he attempt to make a run for it.

Anders’s ankle gave an untimely throb, almost as though it meant to remind him how well _that_ escape plan would fare. And if he did run, where would he go? The City of Chains was out of the question, just like a man wouldn’t run from the darkspawn into the burbling pits of the Blackmarsh while imagining a preferable outcome.

Anders wished he’d asked Nathaniel more about his time in the Free Marches, boring as those stories were, without all the danger and roguish excitement and sexual charm he’d expected. Mostly, he wished Nathaniel had mentioned the mountain mages, and whether Ostwick had a port that sailed ships back to Ferelden, taking wanted apostates on board for little to no coin.

Fenris continued to stare Anders down— _he_ might just as well have been the demon, a gaze bestowed with more deadly promise than Varric’s weapon—but Hawke’s back was to Anders now, and Anders’s question went unanswered, just one of many.

‘Tell me you have good news,’ Hawke said instead. His fingers traced the corner of a worn patch against his knee, where someone had sewn a tear in the fabric. It was a restless motion, the first time Anders had seen him close to fidgeting. He wondered if Hawke regretted not bringing his staff, to have something solid he might steady his hands against, the same way Anders was doing now—tracing a familiar line up and down the curved wood with his thumb, until the skin started burning.

‘Starkhaven is as vile a seat of exploitative power as ever,’ Fenris said. His fingers flexed— _he_ had the talons, whereas Hawke, despite the name, didn’t. ‘The Circle has expanded to three separate sites in order to accommodate its prisoners. The newest is guarded more fiercely than the king himself, while the others stand at the center of town, surrounded by merchants and their wares. They do not think to guard them, because there is nothing of value worth stealing inside.’

Anders felt the grip of an icy fist close around the pit of his ribcage—a sharp hand, just like Fenris’s, reaching through muscle and bone to bury shards of frost in the quickening muscles of his heart. Nathaniel had never mentioned Starkhaven or its Circle, but Anders couldn’t imagine such news would have escaped Lake Calenhad’s gossip—a place where there were too many imprisoned mages to be _stored_ within a single building.

Varric whistled, but it wasn’t a jolly tune. ‘Choirboy sure turned out to be one determined enthusiast, didn’t he?’

‘Sebastian is doing what he believes is _just_ ,’ Fenris said, wide eyes hooded beneath his lids. ‘As are you, dwarf—and you as well, Hawke.’

‘And you,’ Hawke added, the easy grace of his shoulders lost, or at least forgotten. Anders could see the bad back he’d mentioned now, all the spots of raw tension where he carried his burdens the way Keran had hefted that desk, the sort of ache a good poultice couldn’t fix.

‘Yes—and me,’ Fenris agreed. He rubbed his nose against a steel-tipped knuckle, snorting inelegantly. ‘We are all fools. And now—’ His sharp fingers swung through the air, gauntleted thumb curved into a point, forefinger tracing a single line that stretched from his chest to the nose on Anders’s face. Anders pressed at the side of said nose with a knuckle, shifting the balance of his weight, watching light glint off dark metal and the light swallowed up by Fenris’s narrowed eyes. ‘And now,’ Fenris concluded, ‘ _this_.’

There was no mistaking the subject of his appraisal: Anders, the only other person left standing, squared off against a formidable enemy. He knew the elf’s name, but not his purpose, nor the source of his animosity, nor whether he’d be dragged up to the nearest peak and tossed over if Fenris decided he was having a bad day. Which, from the looks of it, he was. His fingertips scrabbled along the insides of his gloves, a skittering sound, like the chitinous scramble of childer grubs unfurling their armored bodies, scuttling across the stone floors of Kal’Hirol, conferencing in childer-grub chatter in the dark.

Hawke waved a hand more quietly. ‘As my good friend Varric always says—when it rains, it pours.’

‘A charming sentiment,’ Fenris said. ‘And, like so many of the rest: it explains nothing.’

‘Nothing we can figure out for ourselves, you mean,’ Hawke replied. He shrugged, broad muscles in his back beneath the fall of his vestments, and the only reason Anders knew there was a twinge of pain hidden there was because he was a trained and seasoned professional. Not even Hawke’s companions noticed it.

Other people’s discomfort—in the midst of his own—made Anders feel not better but at least not worse. There was camaraderie in agony; it was why so many people accepted that misery loved company at the best and worst of times, no matter who or what you were.

‘Still,’ Hawke continued, ‘there are other ways to learn whether our new friend is who he says he is.’

Fenris snorted again, deep in the back of his throat. ‘ _What_ he says he is.’

‘That, too.’ Hawke glanced over his shoulder, face hidden in half-shadows behind the fall of his cowl-mussed hair. The scar on his cheekbone was easier to see from this angle, the way the skin pulled against it as his face moved, the way one eyelid twitched at the corner, dark lashes and brows untouched by the same gray streaked at his temples and through his beard. One of his furred pauldrons tickled his jaw and his nose wrinkled, just before he shrugged the feeling away. ‘What do demons dream about, I wonder? We’ll soon find out. I take it you weren’t followed here, Fenris?’

‘I was not,’ Fenris replied, with a bit of pride to color the statement. ‘Not as _you_ were followed, by… _this._ ’

‘I have a name,’ Anders mumbled, but no one heard him or listened to him or cared. He was just a shadow in the room they all felt but refused to acknowledge feeling. ‘Not that you’ve asked for it, but _still_ —’

‘Believe it or not, elf, but Hawke wasn’t followed,’ Varric said. ‘The way I hear it from Keran is that he picked Blondie up along the way.’

‘As though he were an old scarf or a forgotten clanspin—or a stale biscuit.’ Fenris’s expression soured. ‘Why am I not surprised? These things have power, Hawke. Should you invite them in, they will _not_ leave. It is a trick—it is a _tactic_. And this creature that wears _this_ face—’

‘I’m starting to think you have the wrong person,’ Anders said, louder this time, not hysterical, but too shrill for everyone to keep ignoring it. ‘I have one of those faces, actually—do you know that the Warden Commander once told me I reminded him of Alistair Theirin? Yes, _the_ Alistair; I don’t see the resemblance myself, but that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Someone thinks you’re someone they know, or a demon they don’t want to know, but it turns out it’s all one big misunderstanding—and I get put on the next boat back to Amaranthine with a pat on the back and an apology and maybe a note explaining my absence to the wardens, since they can be picky about that kind of thing. When you’re supposed to be clearing out broodmothers and instead you’re being kidnapped.’

‘Not kidnapped,’ Hawke said.

‘Not a demon,’ Anders countered.

‘They…have not done their research,’ Fenris added. ‘This is some shade of the man, but the man himself—’

‘Why don’t we get some fresh air, Blondie?’ Varric suggested. Hawke twitched again. The weapon Varric carried glittered like a temple idol, an ancient treasure, and he touched her with distinguished reverence as he stood, the chair groaning at the loss of his low weight. ‘Seems to me like you need it. Don’t worry, Hawke, I can take care of myself against one _itty_ bitty mage-demon—and the two of you can discuss where we’ll head next, and where we’ll meet up with Feynriel, if I took your carefully coded meaning right before. You look after all the things you usually look after, and I’ll do the same, and nobody gets too worked up. What do you say?’

‘This cannot be _summarized_ like one of your… _stories_ ,’ Fenris warned.

‘No kidding,’ Varric agreed. ‘I’ve been pretty blocked these days, too. Have I mentioned that lately? Can’t write about my usual source material, either, since if that kind of thing falls into the wrong hands…’

‘I need my fresh air now,’ Anders said, cold sweat making his staff slide along his palms. He didn’t want to be out in the cold again or even under an open sky, but the close air of the tent wasn’t preferable to sunlight—even if it did shift in slim and slight over the toothy mountain peaks, nothing so broad and open as an Amaranthine field.

‘I hear you,’ Varric told him. ‘Time for walkies. The elf’s back, and we don’t have time to waste, Hawke. Gotta get to the next point _before_ one of Sebastian’s men gets to this one.’

‘Oh, Varric,’ Hawke said. ‘How _would_ I tell my ass from my elbow if you weren’t around to do it for me?’

‘Something I wonder every single Maker-forsaken day of my blighted life, Hawke,’ Varried replied. He winked, and gestured with his weapon. ‘Come on, Blondie. Bianca and I could use a stroll.’

*

There were no _strolls_ on the harsh-cut roads hewn into the Vimmark Mountains—only endless, winding pathways carved between the pale rocks, sending them up then down again at a whim, around steep corners and above even steeper drops. Anders was forced to halt proceedings halfway in so he could send a pulse of healing magic through the swollen joint of his ankle, fingertips cool against the thin leather upper of his boot.

‘Handy trick,’ Varric said, to ease his obvious staring.

‘ _I_ think so,’ Anders agreed. ‘And as you can see, it’s not blood magic or an untimely bolt of lightning. There’s nothing demon-y about _spirit healing,_ is there? It even says it right in the name. Spirits. _Not_ demons.’

Something hardened in Varric’s jaw, expression flickering like sunlight disappearing behind a craggy outcropping. Anders was used to his mouth getting him into all kinds of trouble, but usually he had the privilege of knowing what he’d said wrong, talking his way in and then out of insults by equal measure. Half the fun of being offensive was doing it on purpose, and he didn’t like this sudden twist, making blissful strides in an otherwise friendly conversation—only to find he’d stepped smack in the middle of a hunter’s snare.

‘Something the matter?’ Anders asked, voice so light it was nearly lost in the wind.

‘Nah.’ Varric shook his head. ‘That’s just… I’ve heard that argument before, you know? From someone who looked a lot like you. It takes me way back, and sometimes a man’s gotta be _prepared_ to remember. Even a dwarf needs some warning every now and then.’

Anders readjusted the hem of his robes, testing his weight on the mended appendage. It hadn’t been a bad sprain, just enough to niggle, a mild but no less noticeable discomfort—like the blisters that were beginning to form on his toes.

That would teach him to wear a pair of new boots to Kal’Hirol. Apparently, one never knew when to expect a jaunty side-trip of hiking with a dwarf.

At least Varric’s short legs meant he traveled at a manageable pace. Anders didn’t like to think of the state he’d be in if _Hawke_ was the one leading him by the nose while he paused to catch his breath or heal his wounds or scuff chunks of shale out of the heel of his left boot.

‘And…I don’t suppose you’d be willing to clarify that cryptic statement for me?’ Anders asked. They were a fair distance from camp now, tucked into a narrow crevice between a pile of rubble and the tall stone cliffs of the nearest mountain. There was nowhere comfortable to sit, but at least they were sheltered from the wind, howling just outside their meager corner. Now seemed as good a time as any to demand some answers—or at least ask after them politely. ‘Like, for example, _where_ it takes you back to? And who’s waiting when you get there, that sort of thing? Call me difficult—most people do that—but I get the impression you lot _don’t_ think I’m the king of Ferelden. And if you do—you’re in for a big disappointment.’

‘Sure sounds like the story of Hawke’s life—and I should know, since I’m the one who keeps trying to write it.’ Varric rubbed his leather glove against his broad jaw, mouth easing into a smile. The tension in Anders’s lower back eased with it, soothed away by bluff fingers and broad hands. Varric—unlike other dwarves Anders had known—had a talent for setting a man at ease with the twinkle in his eye, the furrow in his blond brow, the smile on his face. The fact that he didn’t buffet friend and foe alike with blasted belches helped to foster his healing aura. ‘But I can’t lie, Blondie—that kind of mix-up’d make for a better yarn than the usual fare. Royalty hiding out in an apostate camp in the Vimmark Mountains? The _king_ being an apostate himself? You could ride down there, sign a treaty and end the war, neat as you please. It’s not the sort of thing you could wrap up in one novel, though. …Maybe a series.’

Wind glanced off the rock at Anders’s back, whistling through the crags and cracks. He was sheltered, but the chill still seeped into his skin, beneath the delicate fabric of his robes, gooseflesh creeping over his bare arms and naked calves. The Warden Commander had given him this set of robes as a gift—immediately after he’d pulled them off some lonely old skeleton, moldering away in a secluded crypt.

Anders usually filled them out better than a bag of bones, but now he felt as bare as that skeleton and just as brittle, breezes singing straight through his ribs.

‘The war?’ he asked, swallowing to wet his throat.

‘Mages and templars,’ Varric said. ‘You _might_ have heard of it. Don’t play coy with me, ‘cause I _invented_ it. I _still_ think it’s a big dust-up between a lot of angry people in skirts, but things have gotten out of hand in a big way. Ever since…well, _you_ know.’

Anders took a deep breath, cold sweat dampening his brow where the hair wisped free from its knot. He felt like he was back in the Circle again, Karl Thekla staring at him over the edge of a musty tome and expecting Anders to provide the answers to a question he’d just posed, a test he wasn’t expecting and couldn’t pass and didn’t want to fail.

 _You know this,_ Karl would say, and Anders would practically writhe in his seat, until the obvious blanks in his knowledge became too large to cover up.

‘No,’ Anders said. He tugged at a loose thread in his sleeve, fingers rolling the cotton into a knot. ‘I don’t know.’

‘ _Oh_ boy.’ Varric seated himself on a hard, round boulder, boots digging into the gravel under his feet. ‘I’m almost not sure which to hope for, Blondie—that you’re lying, or that you’re _actually_ telling the truth.’

Anders perched beside him, not too close that he got the crossbow sight shoved into his ribs for his efforts but not too far away that he wouldn’t be considered companionable. Overtures meant nothing if no one ever made them, and high up on the mountainside, with no one to hear Anders scream, was the perfect place to start.

Varric was nicer than Fenris. That much was obvious. Anders couldn’t cozy up to a murderous elf, but a storytelling dwarf was a better bet—even if wagers were never Anders’s strong suit.

‘If I was lying, it’d be less obvious,’ Anders admitted. ‘I have no idea what I’m doing here or what you want from me. When I complained about _anything_ being better than shoveling broodmother guts out of Kal’Hirol for days, I didn’t mean _this_.’

‘Sometimes you’ve gotta be more specific about what you wish for,’ Varric said.

Anders sighed. ‘You’re telling _me._ ’

The quiet that followed was something other than silence, no less oppressive but no more dire, just Varric shaking his head and patting his crossbow and letting loose with the occasional, simple sigh, the _scritch_ of his stubble as he scraped his thumbnail over the side of his jaw, toward the corner of his mouth. Anders poked his boot toes together, then winced when the movement pinched a fresh blister. He wanted to heal it, but the trip down would just hurt the soft skin all over again, and if he never let himself callus, he’d be in some kind of pain forever.

There was a life lesson in that—Anders wasn’t in the mood to figure out what. He stole a few sidelong glances at Varric, who finally caught his eye and lifted one heavy brow.

‘You’re gonna give me a complex with all those meaningful looks,’ Varric told him.

Anders tugged a feather loose from his shoulder and held it up, watching the fluffy spines shiver in the shifting breeze. ‘You’re so handsome,’ he replied. ‘I can’t help it.’

‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ Varric said. ‘Especially with a storyteller. You’re pretty good—for a demon.’

‘And you’re pretty smart,’ Anders countered. ‘…For a dwarf.’

Varric stroked his palm over the length of the bow in his lap, over all the cogs and gears and finicky pieces that were probably as deadly as they were confounding. Something ticked, a lock being drawn, polished metal shifting and grinding. ‘The thing about stories is, once you let ‘em go, people know who you are. Demons, too. The stories we tell, how we choose to tell ‘em—well, I’m no master of the Fade, of course, and I don’t _want_ to get into some debate on demons and spirits and all that nug-wash, but I’ve seen enough to make me wonder why it is you’re asking.’

‘Because I don’t know what you’re talking about?’ Anders’s voiced raised on the question and he dropped his feather, cursing as it blew away. He reached after it, then realized it’d been carried across one of the narrow passes between cliffsides, and he could see it caught on the air for a few, brief moments before it snagged against a sharp slant of shale, stuck on the other side of a small ravine. It fluttered, then stilled. ‘I don’t know what game you and your friends are playing here, but the wardens aren’t rich. They won’t pay you. The Warden Commander _will_ take offense, though, and he _has_ slain his fair share of archdemons—just one Archdemon being enough for anyone, but I’m _pretty_ sure a couple of high dragons are part of the number, as well, and you don’t want to annoy a man like that. He has principles. He has too much time on his hands. He _kills ogres_ before _bedtime_ and he likes me enough to give me pretty gifts.’

‘Sounds like a good story,’ Varric said.

‘Well, hopefully you’re not a demon,’ Anders replied. He wiggled his fingers and made a noise to go with it, a desperate _ooh_ like a keep-cellar ghost. ‘Because if you are, I just gave you my life story. I never thought I’d finally be tempted by a dwarf with no beard and too much chest hair, but there you have it. If _only_ I’d listened to your sage advice.’

Varric snorted; it took Anders a few moments to realize he was laughing. It didn’t sound cheerful, just a dry, gallows chuckle, not the same nervous humor Anders sunk into whenever he was frightened or angry or backed into a corner with a whole phalanx of sun-shields lined up in front of him. It sounded tired, the same _huff huff_ of an empty wine-skin being stepped on.

Anders remembered the twitch of Hawke’s shoulders beneath his pauldrons, the scar on his cheek, the dark shadows under his eyes. He remembered the cracks in Fenris’s armor, the dust and blood streaking their pauldrons. Maybe it hadn’t been as noticeable as the gleam of the weapons, the fine staff Hawke wielded or Varric’s golden bolt-monster, but it was there: the weariness travelers sunk into when there was no destination in mind.

‘You’re pretty funny,’ Varric said at last.

Anders sniffed. ‘Charming,’ he corrected. ‘My best quality.’

‘The humor’s appreciated, Blondie—don’t get me wrong.’ Varric shifted, easing back into a more comfortable posture. ‘I’d tell you the whole story, but you’ve already got the gist of it, don’t you?’

‘It has to do with Starkhaven and this mysterious _Choirboy_ ,’ Anders replied. ‘And you keep hinting at a big horrible something I’d rather you’d outright say so I can get this feeling of dread over with and it can all be—’

‘One big misunderstanding?’ Varric asked.

‘Exactly,’ Anders said.

‘I’m not good with short stories.’ Varric’s fingers found a stick resting against his boulder, and he dragged the tip along the ground, through the trail dirt and small, broken rocks. ‘Leaving out the details—what took us from point A to point B in the first place—just seems _wrong_ , especially when you consider the bigger picture. And this one’s not exactly the kind of heartwarming tale you tell around a campfire to reassure the new guy, but…’ He gave a shrug, as though to say his hands were tied. As though _Varric_ was the one who’d been taken prisoner.

Anders wasn’t about to fall for that.

‘ _Go on_ ,’ he said.

‘For you,’ Varric continued, ‘I’ll make it short and sweet. No fuss, no mess. Clean as it can be, under the circumstances. Here’s the thing—about ten years back, we knew this mage with a mission. And _he_ had this…spirit of Justice in him—I swear to you on the dirty thaigs of my ancestors, that’s _not_ some kind of a euphemism. Now, camp’s pretty equally split on whether or not that made him an abomination, but this isn’t one of those morality stories. Not this time. Lucky for you—cause if it was, we’d be here until sundown, and it gets bone cold in these mountains at night.’

‘I…see,’ Anders said, even if he didn’t, folding his arms over his chest. When the wind started up its howling again, tossed against uneven, time-beaten stone, he glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see the abomination in question shambling over the hills toward him.

‘Not yet, you don’t.’ Varric’s attention fell once more to the stick in his hands. ‘Let me try to spell it out better. Our friend with the spirit of Justice—he had a bit of an obsession. Some of us tried to distract him, and some of us _almost_ succeeded, but in the end he was too far gone. Too dedicated to his cause, I mean, and I guess I can’t fault him for that. He did what he could with the tools he had—the tools we helped him gather—and one night, neat as you please, he blew Kirkwall’s chantry sky-high.’

‘—Beg pardon?’ Anders asked, throat dry as the crumbling shale beneath Varric’s stick.

There wasn’t a single Circle mage who didn’t dream of exacting some kind of revenge on the chantry—or the tower that kept them locked up, or the templars who stood guard at the door—but they never got past the idea, the inspiration, the half-dream and half-nightmare. Fantasy worked best behind closed eyelids, wild fits that passed quickly as a summer storm. The promise of swift retaliation, broadswords and sun-shields and templar armies, was reason enough for privacy and caution and enough to keep those daydreams where they belonged: somewhere secret and silly and more private than the Fade.

‘Yeah,’ Varric agreed, like he was an underground dwarven blood mage who’d just embarked on the sticky business of reading Anders’s mind. ‘You think that’s bad, you should’ve been there to see it. Tried to put it down on paper too many times to count—do it _justice_ , as they say—but it was the color of the sky I can’t quite get, the taste in all our mouths… Anyway, like I said, that was ten years back. The Circles rose up against the chantry—I guess they figured they were never going to get another signal like _that_ one—and _that’s_ how Kirkwall saw its very first Exalted March, led by the prince of Starkhaven. Better known as Choirboy, in certain company, and _Sebastian Vael_ , in others.’

Anders licked his lips, poking at the sore spot where the chapped skin had been chafed into an outright cut. He tasted the tang of dried blood and sucked his lips between his teeth, which only served to make the sting worse. ‘So this Choirboy fellow is a prince? Maybe you should have led with that, Varric. Otherwise it’s a deceptive nickname.’

‘‘Crownboy’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it,’ Varric said. ‘Aw, who knows. Maybe I’m just a creature of habit.’

‘And the elf—I mean, _Fenris_ was in Starkhaven.’ Anders shook out his arms, attempting to coax some warmth back into his limbs, chafing his elbows with his palms. The chill in him went deeper than the simple cool of the mountain air. ‘…Spying on the prince?’

‘He’s king now, actually.’ Varric chuckled, like Anders was in on the joke. ‘Can you believe that? King Sebastian Vael, the Divine’s own right arm. He used to turn red as an Orlesian tomato when Isabela flirted with him, and now he’s helping the Maker crush these mage rebellions every chance he gets—a hero for _his_ cause, and with martyr blood on his hands to prove it.’

‘Hilarious,’ Anders agreed. Even the sturdy rock at his back seemed insubstantial; he had to focus on the ground beneath his feet, the sharp prick of his fingernails against the insides of his palms, to keep from falling through, just one more gust of wind lost in the echoes of the Vimmark Mountains.

It was a good story. One of the best, enough to make Anders ball his hands into fists without even realizing it. But, even on the edge of his seat, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it as anything more than fiction, despite the gooseflesh raised on his arms and the hairs trembling on end at the back of his neck.

‘Anyway,’ Varric said with a sigh. ‘It turns out mages aren’t so easy to crush when they’ve got a martyr to rally behind. And this cause couldn’t have asked for a better martyr.’

Anders had to remind himself that he’d asked for this, in a roundabout fashion. Knowing was better than sticking his head in the ground and filling his ears with mud. Still, he couldn’t help but wish that Varric’s story was a bit more cheerful, or their reasons for living as fugitives in the mountains just a little less dire, or their delusions a little less obvious. That sort of thing.

‘Your friend the abomination,’ Anders said. It didn’t need to be a question.

‘That’s the one.’ Varric let the stick fall between his fingers, head bowed in thought. When he raised his gaze, it was to look Anders’s way, catching him in the middle of straightening his feathers where they’d been buffeted out of place. ‘And he just so happens to be the guy you bring to mind every time you open your mouth. Although I have to say, you’ve got a way better sense of humor than he did. Don’t think it goes unappreciated, either. We need that kind of attitude out here.’

‘Well,’ Anders agreed, ‘you’re not going to get it from the elf.’

‘No kidding—although we _used_ to get it from Hawke.’ Varric patted his weapon again, just as reverent as ever. ‘Now, not even Bianca can see fit to muster a joke. I do what I can to keep spirits up, but I’m just one dwarf. All these people can be so _dour_.’

‘Living in mountains this cold does that to people,’ Anders said, setting aside the _Bianca_ thing—whoever that was—for the time being. Introductions could be made later, along with flirtatious overtures, if the woman in question wasn’t some bluff mountain beast with chiseled features and hardscrabble hands. ‘Normal people need houses. Real ones. Made of wood with bed-frames and windows and doors. Without all that, they get a little… _not right_ , if you know what I mean.’

‘Know what you mean?’ Varric snorted. ‘Blondie—I’m _living_ what you mean. You think I don’t prefer a nice fire in my hearth and a footstool to kick back on every now and then? Not to mention the drinks… My writing’s suffering, too. Can’t make proper output when you’re moving around all the time, interrupted by _meetings_ and _dire situations_ and constantly _moving on_.’

‘Exactly,’ Anders said. ‘Which is why—I mean, the story _was_ good, and I got all the flutters and the butterflies, just like you wanted. It was a noble effort. I’m impressed. Most of the dwarves I know would’ve just belched in my face and let that speak for itself. It’s just…all this business with the Circles and Starkhaven and the Exalted Marches—you can’t honestly expect me to believe it?’

‘Truth’s always stranger than fiction,’ Varric pointed out. ‘That’s why we need fiction in the first place. To help us make sense of all that nug-shit.’

‘ _Riiiight._ ’ Anders did his best to muster a laugh from the depths of his chest, but it lost its strength halfway through his throat, and died right there on his lips. ‘But Exalted Marches are _kind_ of a big deal. For Fereldans and Wardens and lonely apostates. Especially for lonely apostates—but mostly for _everyone._ I mean, I would have heard of it already, for one thing. Chantries being blown sky high and Starkhaven amassing templar armies and the like. It’s not just the sort of thing you miss during a day or two in the Deep Roads, is it?’

‘Happened way back in 9:37 Dragon.’ Varric shook his head with the look a man wore when he started to think—more deeply than was necessary—about how many years he’d seen, how many years he had left to live. ‘Can’t believe how long ago it was, either. Good thing gray hair doesn’t run in the family. Could you imagine this chest getting all silver?’

‘Now I _know_ you’re lying,’ Anders said.

‘Why?’ Varric peered down at his chest, running his gloved fingers through the golden forest. ‘Don’t tell me you found gray in there. Quit looking so close; you’ll make me blush.’

‘Not that, though if you want, I’ll be happy to conduct a thorough search later,’ Anders promised. ‘I wasn’t speaking about your chest hair, distracting as it is. The year, Varric—it’s 9:30 Dragon. I think the Vimmark Mountains are getting to you.’

Varric paused, glancing up at the sky, past the mountaintops with their fringes of snow, distant and glinting in the final dregs of daylight. Anders squinted after him, trying to see what he saw, but the view was bright enough to be blinding, and by the time he shielded his eyes and refocused, Varric was looking somewhere else.

‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Interesting.’

‘Sorry to ruin your, um, fiction,’ Anders added. ‘Or your truth. Or whatever it was.’

‘Just a story,’ Varric said, shaking his head again. ‘Part truth and part fiction. Just like all the best ones are. You believe what you want to believe, anyway, and leave me to deal with the rest.’

Anders squeezed his palms between his knees, bringing some warmth back to his knuckles and fingertips. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

‘And you know what else is a plan?’ Varric hauled himself to his feet, strapping his bow over one broad shoulder. ‘No more picking posies on the mountainside and whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears all afternoon long. We’d better get back down to camp before we’ve got a situation with Starkhaven archers closing in on us. Don’t believe me? ‘Cause it’s happened before.’

‘Oh, Varric,’ Anders said, following him back down the narrow mountain path, skittering out of the way of a dull-eyed goat’s vacant stare, ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore.’

‘Good,’ Varric replied. ‘You keep that outlook up, Blondie. Might just take you somewhere.’

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders isn't a morning person; there's a statue of a healer in Wildervale.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be, but considering the agony he’d imagined—long stretches of silence, punctuated by Hawke taking offense at Anders’s demon-breath, attempted murder at least once before sunrise—that wasn’t saying much.

Hawke carved for a while and Anders suffered the injustice of Keran’s culinary failings until, without warning, Hawke stretched and left the bed, gesturing for Anders to take his place.

‘Get some rest,’ he said. ‘Unless you want me to believe you’re a morning person.’

‘That would be a lie,’ Anders admitted, shuffling toward the pile of furs-without-pillows, the threadbare blanket tossed carelessly on top. He nudged one of the animal skins with his toe, and Hawke offered him a hard grin, one that didn’t touch his whiskey-colored eyes. ‘And I don’t lie to you. I’m painfully honest, and I have…the Warden Commander says it’s no fewer than _sixteen_ obvious tells by last count. So when you’re doomed to that kind of failure from the start, is there even any point?’

‘Get some rest,’ Hawke repeated. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow at dawn.’

Varric had guessed right. Anders decided not to mention it as he settled himself onto the uncomfortable bed—if it could even be called a bed, when that would have been an insult to beds everywhere. It smelled of rain and of dirt, of the cold mountain walls and hard earth rather than soft mud; it was a nicer scent than everything Anders was assaulted by on the regular, Oghren’s cacophony of stinks and the blood and rot and wretched darkspawn filth of the Deep Roads. But it still didn’t smell _right_ , not anything like what Anders was expecting. He didn’t think he’d get much rest no matter how concerned Hawke was about grumpiness in the morning.

Anders set his staff down by the bed where Hawke’s had been—Hawke was holding his between his knees, resting his jaw against the head, sitting in the rickety chair by his desk. He’d stopped his carving, perhaps having realized he wasn’t any good at it, so the knife and the wooden kitten rested beside him, while Anders met his eyes across the distance.

Sometime after that—Anders couldn’t recall when—he must have fallen asleep, since he was jostled awake before he knew it, hand shaking his shoulder as he squinted past the prickles of sticky sleep in his eyes.

‘Whossat whatsit?’ he asked. Shadows above him blotted out the pale light, accompanied by the sound of distant voices calling, the creaking of wood and the slapping of canvas on canvas, the quick shift of the wind. When Anders’s vision cleared, he realized the tent was being packed up from around him, broken down into transportable pieces and carried away by enterprising mountain madmen.

‘Words to live by,’ Hawke’s voice said. A moment later, Hawke helped him to his feet, sticking his staff into his open hand. ‘Well said, Anders.’

‘Not a morning person,’ Anders reminded him, stumbling out into the fuzzy haze of mist and dawn. ‘It’s indecent to wake a person this early, you know.’

‘In the back with the others,’ Hawke replied. He shoved an armful of dew-damp canvas into Anders’s chest. ‘And hold onto this, will you? That’s the roof of my tent. I’ll be _so_ cranky if it goes missing.’

Anders clambered on board in the back of the wagon where Hawke had left him, shouting a few last orders to Keran—who didn’t have the decency to look as sleepy or muzzy-headed as Anders felt. Then, he sat in his old position, head still swirling. He wasn’t ready to accept where he’d been brought, much less that it was time to move on. The quick pace gave him no chance to get settled, to recognize or contemplate or understand anything that was happening to him.

But when he thought about Varric’s cautionary words, the King of Starkhaven who was supposedly nipping at their heels, his archers and his mage-hunters, Anders didn’t mind the sense of fleeing as much as he would have otherwise.

Fleeing was a specialty of his, whether his pursuer was imagined or not.

A moment after Anders managed to get himself comfortable, shoulders pinched between two barrels, a broad, ink-stained hand stuck its way in through the wagon-flap. ‘Hand up?’ Varric asked from without.

‘No, you’re much too heavy for me to help you,’ Anders replied. ‘Maybe some other time—when all dwarves aren’t so _dense,_ and all mages have a little more muscle.’

‘ _I_ will help you up,’ Fenris’s low tones offered. Varric scrabbled in almost immediately, grunting hard, his large dwarven head cresting the slim opening of the wagon-back before the rest of him followed.

‘Great,’ he said, heaving his crossbow over with him. ‘Thanks for that, Blondie. Letting me get tossed in here by that elf—I’ll never forget the indignity.’

‘Just think of Bianca, Varric.’ Keran slipped into the wagon from the front, then set to work quickly, nimble fingers lacing up the caravan flaps, his cheeks pink and stinging from the wind. There were worse sights to be confronted with on an early mountain morning; Anders told himself to be grateful that his kidnappers weren’t ugly—like talking darkspawn with melting faces seeking revenge, all sagging flesh and rotten muscle and blistered, bared bone. ‘She wouldn’t want to see you struggling, now would she?’

‘I don’t understand how this Bianca can see _anything_ if she’s never around,’ Anders said. In fact, with all the excitement of sleeping on Hawke’s hard bed and being wrenched from sleep by Hawke’s hard hands, he’d all but forgotten about the elusive female member of their growing party. ‘We nearly left without her.’

‘Never in a million years,’ Varric said. He tucked his crossbow against his lap, giving her tiller an affectionate pat. ‘Wherever I go, Bianca’s right there with me.’

The cart creaked to life around them, the snap of leather sounding smartly in the otherwise quiet morning. Anders didn’t need to see Hawke in order to imagine him in the rider’s seat, graying head bent beneath his graying cloak, shoulders stooped to give the impression of a much older man at the reins. His staff had been tucked in back—Anders could see it braced next to his own, beneath the bulky shadow of Varric’s writing desk and a barrel of grain.

He understood better now the need for secrecy—or at least, that _they_ believed there was a need for it. Varric had spoken of 9:37 Dragon as though it was something he had to reach back to remember, a date long since passed into the annals of history and legends.

But that couldn’t be possible, because Anders hadn’t lived to see it yet.

‘Don’t look now,’ Anders said, fiddling with the hoop in his ear, ‘but I’m relatively certain we _have_ left your darling Bianca behind, Varric. Unless she’s running alongside the wagon with Fenris. …Come to think of it, in this crowd, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Varric chuckled as the cart rolled over a stone in the road, wheels clacking when they bounced too high for Anders’s liking, making his lower jaw crack against the upper. As the meager contents of his stomach clutched and roiled, he realized not having time for breakfast was actually a blessing; he’d never been put in the rare position of getting _land-_ sick, but there he was, trying to steady his belly with one hand and his body with the other.

Hawke was introducing him to a dizzying array of new experiences. And Anders would have to thank him just as soon as he was able—just after he was sick all over the man’s worn leather boots.

‘Fenris likes to ride up front,’ Keran explained. ‘In case there’s trouble.’ He opened a faded gingham handkerchief on his lap with a red letter ‘M’ stitched into the white corner. Anders wondered who it had belonged to before him—or whether it was a gift from an illiterate relative. It housed a hard bit of bread with a lump of orange cheese, and it was the saddest breakfast Anders had ever seen.

‘That’s a little too conspicuous, isn’t it?’ Anders asked, rather than contemplate his future realities. ‘All those tattoos? He’s not exactly your average merchant’s wife—although I wouldn’t mind seeing him try on the dress.’

He had a giggle at that, though it withered in his throat when he realized no one else was joining in.

‘No one ever gets close enough to see the lyrium,’ Keran said, breaking off a piece of his stale roll. ‘He’s…very good at what he does.’

‘And _Bianca’s_ safe as a newborn nug in her mother’s den.’ Varric hefted the weight of his enormous crossbow, cocking her sight in Anders’s direction. ‘Your concern’s been noted, Blondie. You can consider yourself forgiven. Say hello, Bianca.’

‘Hang on,’ Anders said. Varric had tried to get him to swallow some pretty harsh swill up until now—worse than the ale they served in The Crown and Lion’s taproom, even on the days when Anders found a human tooth at the bottom of his tankard—but this was about to be the final straw. ‘ _That’s_ Bianca?’

‘The only woman in my life,’ Varric confirmed, worn leather gloves rubbing over the crossbow’s lathe in a way that seemed now to be faintly obscene. ‘Isn’t she a beauty? You can look and admire all you like, but she’s taken, so don’t go getting any ideas.’

Anders stared. The crossbow gleamed. Keran munched on his cheese, and Varric smiled over the barrel—a happy man with his happy weapon. There was a murderous elf up front and beside him a mage who still thought Anders was a demon, and the mountain air suited Anders about as much as the rollicking wagon pace.

‘I want to go home,’ Anders said.

‘Buck up, Blondie.’ Varric reached out to give Anders’s boot a reassuring tap. ‘You’ll feel differently once you’ve had a hot bath and a decent nap in a real bed. Almost like you’ve been reborn.’

Anders bit his tongue as the cart rolled over another deep hole in the road, but even that couldn’t sour a sudden rush of hope, fluttering like a pheasant caught in one of the Warden Commander’s snares. He had to hand it to Varric—the dwarf was either a fantastic liar, or every bit the storyteller he claimed to be.

Whether or not the two talents were the same thing in the end made little difference, so long as there was a real bed at the end of this road, waiting for Anders to treat it with the veneration it deserved.

‘Did you say a hot bath _and_ a decent nap?’ Anders plucked idly at the heavy fall of his skirts. ‘This _real bed_ you mentioned—does it have a mattress and a frame and _pillows_ and a cozy blanket just perfect for snuggling?’

‘We’re headed into Wildervale,’ Varric explained, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘The first _and_ last mage’s city in the Free Marches. I think you’ll get your bed, Blondie.’

*

They couldn’t see Wildervale from their hiding place in the back of the wagon, but Anders knew they were there when the road beneath them began to even out, fewer pitfalls and pockmarks and time-scoured dust, more beaten dirt and a seductively slower sway to the cart’s pace. Anders almost let it work its peculiar magic on him, lulled into sleepy boredom by the ease of the rhythm, before his eyes fluttered open, wider than before, at the exact moment he realized what it all meant.

Varric met his gaze across the way and nodded. ‘Bianca’s excited about it, too,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right, Bianca?’

Anders smiled, nice and slow, no sudden movements to let Varric know that such statements made it even more difficult to believe anything else he had to say.

The people he was trapped with, this group of confused individuals living hard lives for no clear reason, hadn’t tried to kill him—and they’d had so many opportunities to shove him off a cliff-side or slit his throat in the night, to truss him up and leave him where they’d found him for wayward templars to find, or for birds of prey to pick out his eyes—but there were a few fates still worse than death. Anders knew that now, having seen what he’d seen, learned what he’d learned and lived what he’d lived: lightless days spent in damp tunnels, trawling the darkness not for hope or peace but for dire, deathly battle.

Broodmothers changed a man’s perspective on everything. They were worse than imagination could offer—and that implied there were other things out there possibly worse, dangers and fates more awful than slimy tentacles and the chitter-chatter and bite of childer teeth. Once a man came to _talking darkspawn_ , flaming golems and possessed dragons made of bone, entire towns disappearing into the Fade and haunted by violent beasts addled with arcane influence, it became clear that bad endings were more than just grisly murders or lives cut tragically short. Torture lasted—and Anders knew his curiosity was being used against him, alongside his confusion, his lack of understanding, his precarious place in a world he’d only barely begun to grasp.

These people weren’t normal. Keran might have been the closest to it, a few crumbs on his downy chin, the sort of man who never grew a proper beard no matter how old he was—but that was the long and short of it, the others an unbelievable collection of the disturbed and the disturbing. Varric was capable of sounding calm and smart and trustworthy, but this Bianca development said it all.

There was no one Anders could trust.

‘I hope Bianca gets a nice cozy bed, too,’ he said, still smiling, cheeks hurting as the cart finally drew to a halt. Keran snorted awake, then looked shy about it, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand; Varric gestured for Anders to get out first.

‘And don’t think you’re letting the elf help me down this time, either,’ Varric told him, while Anders prepared for another awkward dismount, grabbing his staff away from Hawke’s. The little bits and bobs of fur and leather cording tied around the head of the latter tickled his knuckles. ‘I might be the glue holding the binding of this whole operation together—and it might be my laid-back attitude and generally loveable demeanor that helps me get along with everyone—but I’ve got pride and dignity, same as anyone else.’

 _You’ve also got a bow with a name that you keep touching inappropriately,_ Anders thought, but he didn’t stop smiling as he hobbled out into the late afternoon sunlight, careful not to put too much pressure on his bad ankle.

‘You ready for me?’ Varric asked from within.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ Anders replied, holding his arms out.

No one died—no one was crushed beneath anyone else, either—and it wasn’t a miracle so much as it was a farce. Varric managed to make it down, but at the cost of Anders’s pride and dignity, as well as his ankle. It twinged beneath the added weight before Varric’s feet touched down in a cloud of dust; Anders bent to heal himself after, warmth spreading through the bone and the joint, a long, slow pulse that made him feel better physically, though it couldn’t mend the rest of his worries.

He didn’t have the chance to straighten before something heavy and warm settled over his shoulders. It smelled of wood chips and spring rain and soap—and a little sizzle of something arcane as well, especially when two brusque hands arranged the folds of a hood over Anders’s head and around his face.

It was Hawke, and Hawke’s cape; it was warm, and possibly a warm gesture, but Anders didn’t know what to make of it as he straightened, adjusting the fall of heavy fabric so it didn’t crush the feathers at his shoulders.

‘For me?’ Anders asked. ‘Oh, Hawke. You shouldn’t have. Is it because I’ve been complaining so much about the cold?’

‘Right,’ Hawke replied. He sounded distracted, and there was no wink following the gift, no satisfied leer like the Warden Commander would have offered—looking for thanks or a big to-do, something to pass the pleasant time between life-threatening jaunts into the Deep Roads or the Fade.

Anders didn’t know whether or not to thank him. He didn’t know if it was a gift at all or if Hawke even felt the cold, one bare arm pale and striped pink with healing sunburns up to the greave strapped at his elbow.

Varric was watching him—watching _them_ —but he slung Bianca over his shoulder, squinting into the center of the city. ‘Good thinking, Hawke. As always.’

‘As always,’ Hawke agreed.

‘Well,’ Anders said, to be a part of the conversation at least in some small way. ‘Isn’t this…nice. Mage’s city, you say? I’ve always wanted to see one of those. Looks a bit dusty, though, doesn’t it? I was hoping there’d be, I don’t know, duels in the streets or dazzling spires.’

‘Wildervale.’ Varric sighed. ‘At least it’s not Cumberland—that’s what I always say.’

‘Every _single_ time, too,’ Hawke said. ‘But don’t worry, Varric. It _never_ gets old.’

‘Unlike some people,’ Varric agreed.

Anders touched the clasp at his throat, feeling the battered metal warmed by Hawke’s skin. He drew his fingers curiously over its uneven shape, little scratches in the silver like a bird’s spiny feathers. It was warmer beneath the cloak, but he couldn’t enjoy the gesture if he didn’t understand it.

If this was Hawke’s way of making amends for calling him a demon, it was an odd time to start showing remorse.

Fenris chose to show his feelings in a different way, coming around the cart and catching sight of Anders swathed like a shadow—or a demon—in Hawke’s clothing. The _tsk_ he offered, low in his throat, relied on no further commentary and no banter beyond pure disdain.

Anders had to wonder whether he and Oghren might have shared an entire conversation comprised of noises and nothing more, trusting their bodies to communicate what simple words could not.

‘It is a fool’s errand hoping to hide him here.’ Fenris’s eyes were on Hawke, but he didn’t have to look Anders’s way to implicate him. ‘Wildervale does not forget its… _liberator._ ’ He swallowed, as though the word was a speck of trail dust caught beneath his tongue, or as though he was the only elf in Thedas who got the urge—sometimes—to spit at someone else’s feet.

Varric whistled, fitting Bianca into her holster on his back. ‘Little early in the day to be calling Hawke a fool, don’t you think, elf?’

‘ _I_ can’t tell who he is like that,’ Keran added, shouldering a leather pack. ‘I mean—if I didn’t know him already. What’s under that cowl… No one will look twice at another mage landing _here,_ of all places.’

‘And so they will not know of the _viper_ in their midst.’ Fenris drew even with them at last, a bare few paces away, so much more like a snake ready to strike than Anders felt. ‘Yes. It is… _clever_.’

Anders tugged at the clasp again, the tang of sour metal on skin making itself known beneath the fresh smells of the small city. Suddenly, Hawke’s gesture didn’t seem as thoughtful—or as simple. There was a different brand of consideration behind it than the one Anders had imagined, vigilance rather than kindness, wariness rather than forgiveness.

Anders twisted his fingers in a swath of the heavy cotton, but it felt less cozy now that he knew it was something meant to keep him in instead of something meant to keep harsh winds out. The hood Hawke had fashioned was too big, obscuring his peripheral vision as Anders lifted his head to examine the gates behind them, the ones they’d passed through in Hawke’s ox-drawn cart.

The walls of Wildervale were as high as they’d been at Vigil’s Keep after Voldrik Glavonak had finished raising them, taller than three ogres standing top-to-bottom. Anders couldn’t know whether their structural quality would meet with the old stonemason’s approval, but to his untrained eye they looked impressive enough. There were twin guard-towers braced over the gates, and two more set at the east and west corners of the wall. If Anders squinted, he could make out a few lonely soldiers on their patrols high above, like little toys in the distance, set up by a child to keep watch. What he’d imagined at first to be pikes looked more like staves as they came nearer, wrapped in leather with glinting metal tips or a gnarled ball of old root at the end, like the spell-bound off-shoot of a long-dead tree.

No two staffs were ever exactly the same.

They were mages—mage-guards patrolling their mage-city. The breadth of the wall and its outposts were manned by apostates, mages who didn’t have to worry about maintaining their proper place somewhere within the confines of a circle tower. The hints of distant metal were dim and scarce; there were no templars in equal measure to guard their wards, to tell them where and how to stay, to keep them safe from themselves and the outside safe from their power.

Wildervale was a free city for magic, or so Varric had claimed. But Anders hadn’t imagined there might be numbers enough to enforce that freedom rather than simply enjoying it while it lasted.

‘Enough gawking,’ Hawke said. He was in front of Anders like a sudden cloud passing over the sun, hands reaching up to pull the hood more carefully over Anders’s face. His fingers brushed the scruff at Anders’s chin, leaving a flicker of warmth and the sharp scent of elfroot in their wake. Under the light of day and with no cowl to hide behind, the lines around Hawke’s eyes were more pronounced than ever. Anders felt the silly urge to smooth them for him, or at least counsel him against rubbing the fragile skin so hard. ‘If anyone here sees you, there’ll be trouble, understand? And not the fun sort of trouble where you wake up under Corff’s bar wearing someone else’s trousers.’

‘Why, Hawke,’ Anders said. ‘Is there a sordid past behind that bad back you aren’t telling me about?’

‘Blondie, you’ve got _no_ idea,’ Varric said.

‘Is that—Hawke?’ someone asked from behind them, in a voice as nervous as vellum fluttering on the wind.

Hawke turned away, leaving Anders alone with the others. The mage who’d approached them looked to be about Keran’s age, wearing purple robes that flattered his burnished Rivaini complexion. He was accompanied by a man in leathers—one who bore the questionable distinction of having the largest and most robust mustache that Anders had ever seen on a living, breathing creature.

That included the broodmothers—and Oghren, whose braids didn’t count because they were part of a beard, or at least the idea of one, confused as it might have been.

‘Alain,’ Hawke said, a hand raised in greeting for the mage.

‘Paxley,’ Keran said, brightening at the sight of the walking mustache.

‘Do you ever feel like you’re setting up the punchline of a very _bad_ joke?’ Anders asked Varric.

‘Stop right there,’ Varric replied, ‘because I’ve heard them all before, too many times to count.’

‘An elf, a dwarf, and too many mages walk into the taproom,’ Fenris concluded, with a finality and a disgust that made Anders shift in place like a naughty apprentice. ‘Do not speak further. Do as Hawke dictates, and there will be no need to treat you with less care than we do now.’

‘What he means is, keep your mouth shut and play along.’ Varric pitched his voice low, somewhere into Anders’s side so he had to strain to hear it. ‘We’ll pretend you’re mute or something. Trussed up like a qunari _saarebas_. They won’t believe it, but for some reason everybody likes this Hawke fellow, so they’ll do what they can to pretend—for his sake.’

His advice concluded—Anders was grateful for it, a small port in a larger storm—he tipped his head at the others, taking his place by Hawke’s side.

It did look like a joke, just not one of the funny ones, or Anders wasn’t inebriated enough to appreciate it.

‘Everything’s all right?’ Paxley the Mustache asked. He glanced toward Keran for confirmation, but Keran’s expression neither confirmed nor betrayed any information, flushed cheeks pure and simple in the dying sunlight. He had a perfect face for the business of tricking other people; Anders asked himself if he wasn’t secretly the baby-soft ringleader, hardened men like Hawke just a front for his hidden designs.

‘Never been better,’ Hawke replied. It spared Keran the trouble of having to reply, of having to be anything more than a collection of innocent looks and dreamy blue eyes. ‘Just thought we’d drop by for a visit. You know how I love Wildervale.’

‘The feeling _is_ mutual, Hawke.’ Alain—pale gaze in a dark face—didn’t sound like he was lying, but there was apprehension in the set of his mouth nonetheless. He glanced past Hawke, over his shoulders to the city walls, then back to Hawke again, his smile growing more certain of itself. ‘We’ll have your rooms set up for you, of course. It seems like everyone’s dropping by for a visit these days.’

‘That’s because it’s the perfect season for it,’ Hawke said. ‘Just after the sweltering heat, and just _before_ the miserable ice. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘And your guests—’ Alain began.

‘Same ragtag crew as always.’ Hawke sighed. ‘Need to get this one settled in. Found him up close to Starkhaven—so you can imagine what he’s been through.’

Alain’s mouth hardened again. Anders thought he saw a clue, a hint of Starkhaven itself in the distance, the shape of the city in the shadow that fell over Alain’s brow and tightened like dwarven deadbolts in his expression. The ruse, the deception, the fallacy—everyone was in on it, and the more people Anders met who believed all this clap-trap, the harder it was for him _not_ to believe it.

Not everyone could be so deluded. There had to be a better explanation than Anders sleeping through an exalted march and a mage rebellion, something to explain the way Alain’s jaw muscles clenched.

But whatever it was remained a mystery, same as Anders’s face amongst these new strangers.

‘Yes, of course,’ Alain said. ‘I understand. I know it means too little, and maybe even too late,’ he added, for Anders’s sake, ‘after everything you’ve been through—but you’ll be safe here, for as long as you wish to stay.’

‘…And that’s why I love Wildervale,’ Hawke concluded. He stretched his arms behind his back, tilting his neck to the side, cracking a stiff joint and grunting in relief when it finally popped. ‘Shall we? I know _my_ feet are aching. Almost as bad as they used to when I spent all night dancing at a Hightown party. Ah, Varric—weren’t those the days?’

‘I seem to recall you complained more back then than you do now, actually.’ Varric rubbed his chin, thumb and forefinger braced against his jaw. ‘Funny how that works, isn’t it?’

The others seemed to understand the humor in the exchange, but Anders didn’t have the means for it, still feeling the cold air creeping in beneath the fall of Hawke’s cloak. Alain’s sympathy was sweet, but it was also misplaced, and for once Anders didn’t bask in the kindness—knowing how little it had been earned, that it was meant for someone else who deserved it more.

If Alain wanted to pity him for being the victim of a gross joke and a potential kidnapping, that was another story.

But Alain didn’t know him and he didn’t ask to look beneath his hood; that left Anders to follow with everyone else, Hawke taking clipped, neat strides at Alain’s side, such a collection of skirts and staffs that for a moment Anders wondered if he was dreaming.

 _I want to wake up now,_ he thought, except the wish lacked strength and purpose; he was too busy staring at the mages walking and talking openly, wearing their weapons with the same ease as cutthroats sheathed their daggers in plain sight or hire-swords strapped their blades to their sides. Anders was grateful for the cowl again because it meant he could indulge in outright staring, taking in the sights of the people more than he noticed where they were going, the buildings and the carefully plotted streets they passed in order to get there. The fortified walls in the distance cast no long-reaching shadows, but Anders remembered them and their sentinels—and still he wasn’t sure if he felt safe or terrified to be included amongst so many free mages.

There was no one to explain that feeling to, elation and despair in equal measures, the hum and buzz of Anders’s pulse at his throat. The others were apparently used to it and indulged in their petty conversations accordingly: Paxley and Keran chatting about the weather and some lass named Ruvena—who was doing well, now that Paxley was looking after the children more often these days—Fenris silent and wary, Varric whistling, Alain explaining to Hawke the provisions that were set up for that winter and what news they had from the other side of the Vimmark Mountains.

It was too much to listen to all at once and so Anders heard none of it, keeping close to the processional even if he wanted to wander into the slim crowds and somehow melt away. He could have joined any other conversation: two apprentices laughing with each other over a dirty joke; an older man gesturing widely with his staff toward a young woman rolling her eyes; a few elvhen mages playing a game of bones down a street corner.

No one looked harried or chased, glancing over their shoulders for approaching templars or passing hidden notes between their long robe-sleeves. In the Circle, mages were crowded like farm animals into a pen, with no privacy and no choice—clothes and staffs of the same cut and style, acolytes sleeping four-by-each in the apprentice dormitories, even senior enchanters saddled with their fare share of designated roommates. But in the streets of Wildervale, Anders could see real houses, squat, whitewashed buildings with thatched roofs. Some had baskets of yellow and white wildflowers braced beneath the windows, northern blossoms with herbal applications, while others had painted blue window shutters or carvings on the knobs of their doors.

Circle mages shared their most intimate living spaces with strangers or acquaintances they didn’t like very much, accepting one another because they had to or because it was the only option for making private life marginally more pleasant. It was like that with the Wardens, too—people brought together not because of common personalities but common goals, a common purpose, a common place.

A dormitory was the sort of place you tolerated the people you had to live with just to make things easier, but a house was a place where you chose your companions, the faces you wanted to see across the table each night during supper.

Anders heard the voices from within, the laughter, the friendliness. Flashes of a home that would never be his, with high windows that spilled sunlight for his cats to sleep in and a comfortable lap to call his own, passed through his mind. He felt the warmth beneath the chill air, but only with the caveat that it didn’t belong to him.

Still, even seeing the place with his own two eyes didn’t mean Anders could believe it was what it said it was. This still had the makings of an elaborate prank, or the worst idea any mage had put into play since Anders’s fourth escape attempt—when he’d broken his wrist shimmying down a collection of bed-sheets and apprentice smallclothes.

They couldn’t get away with this. Free living was for certain people in Thedas: Magisters past the Hundred Pillars and noblemen everywhere else, from Ferelden through the Free Marches all the way to Orlais. Occasionally a pirate or a smuggler or a mercenary played at that freedom, but they weren’t born with it, and those who pretended to act it out in more than miniature were always punished.

Just like these mages would be.

There were children engrossed in a game of hiding and seeking nearby at the pedestal of a large, bronze statue; Anders could only see its boots, stiff laces and buckles and the hint of wear, a bandage wrapped around one ankle. Hawke and Alain turned left where the path split near its base and Anders followed them, daring to lift his head enough to see who might be honored in the freed mage outpost in Wildervale.

Anders’s last encounter with a statue had been a bosomy cast of Andraste set at the center of the courtyard in Vigil’s Keep. Anders was always intrigued by her archaic beauty, but ultimately concerned about the whole _Exalted March against the mages_ she’d been involved with, and—bosom or no—it was hard to stand too close to the fall of her shadow.

It was only natural to wonder who the apostates might hold as their hero—especially in a place that believed the last Exalted March was more recent than 7:84 Storm.

This statue was the sort Anders never saw: a mage who wasn’t chained or beset by demons or grimacing in dire warning. He held a staff in his right hand while his left was outstretched in a gesture of peace, and there was something ticklishly familiar about the shape of his long nose, the quirk of his thin mouth, the clever wrinkles carved at the corners of his eyes—lending a touch of mirth but also a weary quality to the statue’s face. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble in detailing the fall of his hair, gathered into a half-ponytail that resembled Varric’s style, and the bronze stubble littering the set curve of his jaw. The fading sunlight glanced off the man’s pauldrons, a trick that almost made it seem as though the feathers were ruffling in the breeze.

Anders touched his shoulders, where the feathers were black and soft instead of shaped solid and hard-peaked from beaten copper. His stomach twisted like it had back on the road whenever the cart jolted free of another open pothole.

At the base of the statue was the date _9:38 Dragon_. Beneath that it read: _I HAVE MADE THIS PLACE A SANCTUM OF HEALING AND SALVATION._

 _Varric,_ Anders wanted to say—but Varric had told him to be silent and not draw attention to himself, and Hawke’s actions with the cloak and cowl confirmed the importance of continued compliance.

But Varric had kindly refrained from mentioning that all this secrecy was because there was an enormous sculpture standing at the center of town that might as well have been Anders’s twin.

Storytellers, dwarven or otherwise, had that pesky habit of playing facts closer to the chest than a pair of dwarven diamonds, always determined to have the winning hand at Diamondback.

That Varric was a sneaky one. Anders was going to have to keep an eye on him—if he wanted to survive his time in the land of mad kidnappers and free mages without somehow dying of shock first.

‘They made it about four years ago,’ Keran murmured. It took Anders a moment to realize he’d freed himself from conversation with Paxley to have pity on his confused companion in the cowl. ‘It took them a while to gather the materials, and… Hawke wouldn’t visit while it was being built.’

Anders let his gaze drift back to the road, realizing what he’d already known: that Hawke had kept his head bent in conversation with Alain while they’d passed the apostate’s statue, refusing to look up at its half-familiar face. Varric’s original explanation had confirmation now—big, bold and bronze, someone larger than life that Anders reminded everybody so much of—although Anders personally felt the resemblance was circumstantial at best and accidental at worst.

They weren’t alike at all. For starters, his face was so much more cheerful.

He’d never worn a pair of trousers in his life, either. But the differences went deeper than that, to the ruthless set of the statue’s jaw that Anders wouldn’t have recognized in a mirror. The man on the pedestal was a hero, the martyr Varric spoke of; he’d had the stones for something beyond a series of increasingly ambitious personal escapes that took him as far as the Pearl, that sent him stumbling into the arms of a clever Warden Commander and his rag-tag crew.

Anders had helped save Vigil’s Keep but not without trying to flee first, skirts getting tangled in a snag on a high stone wall. He’d wasted too much time trying to get it untangled again and there’d been no choice after that but to stand and fight, stubborn to the last about his already shortened life-span.

There’d been drinking in the bloody twilight hours after the worst was over—so much drinking—toasts to celebrate what they’d won and mourn what they’d lost, and all Anders remembered about being one of Amaranthine’s great heroes was vomiting into the lap of the Seneschal.

Twice.

Nobody ever thought about what came after—the clean-up, regrouping and rebuilding, healing all the broken bones and swollen bruises, torn flesh and black eyes and festering fevers. A man could be a healer all he liked and still lose people long after the final weapon fell; a man could save Vigil’s Keep practically single-handed and hear songs about himself in his favorite taproom for weeks after, and still be relegated to broodmother duty, knowing full well the songs weren’t really about him after all.

They were about an idea, someone else’s impression, the figureheads people needed in order to convince themselves certain sacrifices were worthwhile. But Anders wasn’t an ideal, just a mage—and a warden, and a person somewhere beneath that.

On a good day, he liked to believe he was more than the sum of his whats, something that made him a _who_.

‘Seeker seeker seeker!’ one of the children laughed, running past Anders so quickly he nearly tripped over her. Keran held him steady and the cowl almost slid loose before Anders managed to catch it, keeping his long nose covered by rich cotton and deep shadow.

‘Catch me if you can, seeker,’ one of her companions replied from around a far corner, and they disappeared into a side street the same way Anders expected the city to disappear.

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke and Anders share some Rivaini spirits; Feynriel seeks Anders through dreaming; livejournal is very mean.

Wildervale wasn’t the largest outpost imaginable; it had the sort of main thoroughfare that could be crossed at a brisk pace without breaking a sweat, comparable in size to the City of Amaranthine. To the north-east was the glittering promise of water, a sizeable lake rather than the vast expanse of the Waking Sea. It was better than being land-locked, an advantageous position for a fort-city; the keep at the center rose before them soon enough, intimidating as Anders always found them, made for barracks and bluff men and hard training.

This one was full of young mages with young staffs rather than lads and lasses in light armor brandishing practice swords.

Anders crossed an open courtyard after passing underneath the portcullis, scorch-marks blackening the stone in lengthy streaks and lessons conducted in full beneath the open sky. Spells blasted from distant corners, bursts of cold ice followed by swells of heat, protective auras shimmering up and shimmering down again and keeping perfect time. Anders also heard the clang of metal on metal, one open area devoted to glittering armor, silverite shields instead of force-barriers, blades instead of wooden staffs.

It couldn’t be real. Nothing of the sort ever happened in Thedas—nothing of the sort ever _would_ happen, either. No matter how many people argued for freedom or begged for it, equality had never been an option, not so long as there was history, chantry, templar and demon.

They didn’t have time to stop and observe the younger mages and their elders working together perfecting fists of the maker and causing the very earth to rumble—though Paxley greeted a bluff ginger woman who was tossing out round shields to her students, and they kissed, just once, as fond as a handshake.

Then, they were inside the keep proper, past the courtyard and safe behind solid walls. Anders was glad not to have to watch anymore—each touching scene, promises of something better than the life he’d known, or the life he’d come, however grudgingly, to accept was his.

‘I’ll tell you one thing: I’m looking forward to a nice, hot bath,’ Varric said, while Hawke greeted each stranger as though they were the best of friends, one after the other from throne room to narrow hall, around each corner and under each lintel. ‘That much time on the open road and I’m starting to smell like the elf’s old place. No offense to your collection of mold and mushrooms, of course.’

‘None was taken,’ Fenris replied. ‘I found the comment was worth no further comment.’

Varric grinned, nudging a door open with the toe of his boot as he broke off from the main party. ‘Always such a pleasure when we can see eye to eye. You look me up if you need anything,’ he added, glancing Anders’s way, and the lack of the nickname hammered on at the end made Anders feel even lonelier, just a collection of the shadows he was forced—even in this free place—to hide in.

The door swung shut but the lock didn’t click. Anders could imagine Bianca set up on a low chair nearby, sight trained on any unwanted intruder while her owner whistled just inside.

Anders had questions for Varric, which he might or might not be able to answer, but he noted where the door was anyway, the room Varric had staked out as his own. Keran and Fenris found their chambers, too, all a part of the familiar rhythm, familiar rooms and familiar spaces and familiar friends to inhabit them. Only Hawke and Alain remained, making the long journey to the farthest end of the hall, where Anders hoped a bed with his name on it lay waiting.

‘I’ll tell you as soon as he arrives,’ Alain finished, unlooping a key on a chain from around his throat and passing it into Hawke’s waiting grip. ‘If your…new companion would like a room of his own, somewhere he can find privacy and peace—’

‘Better that he stays with someone he knows,’ Hawke replied, unlocking the door and beckoning Anders inside, all swift movements easy and reliable and without a single tell for the lie. ‘For some of us, loneliness is the one thing we can’t abide by. After all he’s been through…’

‘Yes; of course.’ Alain lingered in the doorway. ‘Of course I understand. We’ll have the usual sent up?’

Hawke grinned, a tight thing, hardening his jaw instead of softening the corners of his eyes. ‘That Isabela,’ he said. ‘Always manages to smuggle Rivaini spirits in for me _somehow_ , doesn’t she? Sometimes I think she can steer that ship just as easily over land as over water.’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Hawke,’ Alain replied, with his first hint of real humor that day, ‘for whatever reason, the people you know enjoy spoiling you.’

‘Just buttering me up for favors down the line,’ Hawke said. ‘But I’m too wise for it now; I won’t be anyone else’s Feastday goose. If she’s got another Tome that needs finding, I’m _not_ agreeing to help.’

‘So you say,’ Alain said, and left with a swish of skirts and a quiet bow.

Someone had gone to the trouble of kindling a small fire in the hearth of Hawke’s room. The flush of warmth was a welcome change from the icy winds of the Vimmark Mountains, but now that they were within the keep it was making Anders sweat beneath the weight of Hawke’s cloak.

He lifted his fingers to the clasp at his throat, unbuckling the scratched silver and slipping the fabric from his shoulders. It was just the two of them now, and Hawke had already seen his face; he didn’t think he needed to keep up appearances—or lack thereof—any longer.

Anders supposed he was grateful for the man’s concern, but hiding in plain sight for too long left him feeling like a Fade-specter, passing unseen and ephemeral through crowds of the living, unable to grasp their vitality of spirit but hungering for it all the same.

Anders preferred to be noticed, even if it was for something as impersonal as looking like another man.

He folded the cape in his arms, crossing to sit on a low, overstuffed sofa upholstered in fading green. Its cushions gave easily beneath him, far more forgiving than the jouncing seat of an old wagon or the rocky floor beneath Hawke’s tent. Anders bobbed up and down just to convince himself it wasn’t a dream, listening to the old springs creak beneath his weight, then sighed as he finally settled into its cushy embrace.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ Hawke asked from somewhere over Anders’s shoulder.

It was easier to stare into the crackling fire—orange flames rippling and dancing like a pair of Rivaini seers before they read the knucklebones—than it was to bring his eyes back to Hawke, who stood on the far side of the room where it wasn’t as warm, bare arms and battered leathers, that tattoo like a scar above the crook of his elbow. Anders watched a bit of branch turn to pale ash instead, bark crumbling on top of a thicker log before it disappeared completely. His fingers tightened in the tight gray weave of Hawke’s cloak.

There was a soft knock at the door and Anders lowered his head, listening to the sound of Hawke’s bootfalls as he moved to answer it.

‘Rivaini spirits,’ Alain said from the other side. He sounded slightly out of breath, as though he’d run downstairs to the cellar and back double-time, all so Hawke wouldn’t have to wait for this bit of indulgence. Anders still couldn’t understand why he’d decided to live in the mountains when there was a city full of people right here who treated him better than the King of the Free Marches. ‘I brought glasses this time. I thought, if your company wanted to share…’

A short silence lingered in the air between doorway and fireplace while Anders felt Alain’s gaze light curiously on the back of his turned head. Anders kept his face to the far wall and to the hearth—despite how easy it would have been to turn around with an enormous smile, just to see what would happen next.

‘You shouldn’t have.’ Hawke’s words were accompanied by a clink of glass. ‘Listen, the moment Feynriel passes through the gates—’

‘You’ll be the first to know, Hawke,’ Alain promised. ‘We’ve got sentries all over the northern roads into Nevarra. No one catches Wildervale napping on the job.’

‘Well, no one catches _me_ , either, but that’s only because I don’t sleep,’ Hawke said, in a tone that was nearly cheerful.

Anders waited for the fall of the door’s latch before he allowed himself to turn on the sofa, lifting his chin from his chest and his eyes from his lap. The sight he met with was predictable: Hawke standing with a fine crystal bottle in one hand and a pair of low glasses in the other. Yet despite his jolly words, he looked lost, as though he’d taken a wrong turn on the trail somewhere and sunk the wagon wheels-deep into a bog, unable to haul it loose again.

‘He brought _glasses_ this time.’ Anders kept his voice light because he was beginning to view Hawke as a stray cat, the kind with chewed-up ears and one lonely yellow eye; those had to be distracted from a natural instincts to run into the nearest corner and lick their wounds at all times. ‘Do you normally drink from the bottle when you’re alone? What would your mother say, Ser Hawke?’

‘Not much,’ Hawke said, ‘since she died in Kirkwall some thirteen years back.’

If Varric had been there, he’d have taken that moment to perform some of his rare dwarven magic and erase the conversational mishap. But there were no convenient distractions lurking nearby to save Anders from tripping over his tongue, no trapdoor hidden beneath the braided rug by the fire for him to slink into, no rogue’s miasmic flask to pull from his belt and crack open while he bolted out the window and fled the chase of his guilty embarrassment.

Hawke approached the couch despite Anders’s leg lodged knee-deep down his own throat, drawn in by the exchange instead of rightfully scared off. He rested the glasses on a nearby table, then pulled a knife from his boot, sinking the blade into the soft wax seal.

Anders flinched at the glint of firelight off the metal before he realized its purpose—and still he couldn’t bring himself to relax, plucking a stray feather out of the hood of Hawke’s cloak, where the spine had worked its way through the smallest of holes. He thought about flicking it away onto the floor as Hawke grunted and dislodged the stopper from the bottleneck; then, Anders realized this wasn’t his room, his cozy couch or Orlesian throw rug, and tossing garbage about while mentioning people’s dead mothers wasn’t the best plan for endearing himself to his captors.

Hawke rolled the ball of wax off the tip of his knife and against the lip of the table, hiding the weapon once more in his boot.

‘Something to drink?’ he asked, not looking Anders’s way. Instead, he stared into the middle distance, half his face illuminated by the bright firelight, the other side of him plunged into deep darkness. The pauldrons hid most of his expression, especially his mouth, so all Anders could see was the length of his lashes and the bridge of his nose, stark as the Vimmark mountainside and just as cold. ‘I find,’ Hawke continued, ‘that a good, stiff drink helps the bruises on _my_ ass after a full day’s travel in that blighted wagon.’

Anders laughed, more of a worried hiccup than a happy sound. ‘I get drunk easily,’ he warned, taking the offered brandy without further complaint. ‘You might find me with an Orlesian lampshade on my head terrorizing Wildervale with my spicy shimmies after this.’

‘I’ll lock the door,’ Hawke said. ‘And if you kept the Orlesian lampshade on your head, I suppose it wouldn’t be a problem either way. Wildervale could use the _good_ kind of excitement.’

‘All serious keeps need a jester,’ Anders agreed.

After that, he took a steadying pull of the spirits; the first sip burned on its way down, making the corners of his eyes sting more than the sharpest of winds. He coughed, clapping himself on the chest because Oghren wasn’t there to pound on his back and shatter his ribs, and Hawke made no move to rescue him from choking. He poured the second glass for himself instead, twisting the goblet in his hand before he drank, watching all the facets of the liquor burn golden when they caught the light.

‘Good stuff,’ he said, after a thick swallow.

Anders felt the back of his throat closing up, the prickles of heat and spice lodged into the tender muscle and flesh. ‘If by _good stuff_ you mean _seer poison_ ,’ he replied.

Hawke’s lips twitched. ‘I usually do.’

There was little hope in Anders’s heart that Hawke would get drunk on the spirits and spill his secrets; the only real option that left was to get himself drunk instead, and prove through the power of behaving like a blind nug turned on its ass that he wasn’t the demon or the enemy Hawke thought he was.

Most people suffered fools but they didn’t _worry_ about them, and Anders knew better than to think Hawke would be wary of him if he lost all respect for him first.

It wasn’t the same scene as nights spent in the Crown and Lion, reading the Warden Commander’s naughty letters from his elven lover in Antiva, Oghren engaging in belching contests with the locals and winning every time—save for when the gas came out the wrong end. That kind of drinking was crowded and noisy and fun, a collection of soldiers forgetting to be wary around the Wardens who weren’t, technically, a part of their ranks. When they were deep enough into their cups they accepted everyone equally, apostates and rogues and known criminals and farting dwarves, since the ale made them brothers in arms and felled them just the same by the night’s-end. Toast followed toast, the relief of battles hard won and work hard worn, hands blistered when they turned from courtyard training to hauling new stone for old walls. On those nights, they all forgot what they were and even who, and sang sea-songs out of tune with their heads together, damp sweat at their temples.

But drinking with Hawke was almost like drinking alone. It was just as quiet and just as inadvisable, thoughts turning slowly to sadness and worry and shadow as each fresh pulse of heat from the Rivaini spirits settled low in Anders’s chest.

‘And here I was promised lampshades and dancing,’ Hawke murmured over the rim of his glass. The words echoed along the hollow, whistling against the curve, heat from his breath misting the lip of the goblet. Anders took another drink, more of a gulp, also inadvisable, and was spluttering already by the time he realized he’d swallowed too much too fast.

This time, Hawke did clap him on the back, steady between his shoulders. Anders set the glass aside to rub his eyes and fan his face, feeling his cheeks flush red.

‘What do they put in this?’ Anders asked.

Hawke finally chuckled, a burnt sound, like the flakes of white bark turning to ash in the bottom of the hearth. ‘Better not to ask, I’ve found, when you don’t _really_ want the answer to a question.’

‘Well,’ Anders said, ‘I can’t wear the lampshade if my tongue’s on fire.’

‘No,’ Hawke agreed. ‘You’d ruin the lampshade, first of all.’

‘Ruining a pretty lamp is a crime in Orlais, so I’ve heard, and I wouldn’t want to do hard time this close to the border.’ Anders stared into the depths of the liquor, easing into a state of inebriation inch by inch, unable to relinquish the sense of wariness he felt from Hawke in order to indulge in any other comforts. His muscles had relaxed and his ass felt less sore, but little pains kept reminding him of where he was: the pinch in his lower back, the tension in Hawke’s body, the distant throb of his own twisted ankle and the blisters on his toes from the mountain trail. He wiggled those toes in his boots with the accompanying creak of the floorboard and the scuff of bootheels on thick carpeting, the clink of glass on glass as Hawke poured himself another drink. ‘Should we…toast to something?’

‘To Orlais,’ Hawke said, lifting his glass.

‘To lampshades,’ Anders agreed.

‘To Isabela,’ Hawke added, with the barest twitch of his lips.

‘Sounds like a nice enough woman, even if she is trying to poison us,’ Anders concluded.

‘Don’t worry.’ Hawke leaned closer, the couch’s overstuffed cushions giving way beneath the hard lines of his body. Even solid furniture was no match for a man like Hawke; Anders might not have minded determination, but he did take issue with scruples. ‘If Isabela really wanted to kill someone, she wouldn’t choose poison. Too impersonal. She prefers knives—and you still won’t see her coming.’

Hawke illustrated with a flick of his own blade, firelight dancing along the sharpened steel length. There was a bit of green cord wrapped around the grip for ornamentation, frayed at the edge but knotted tight, like a string saved from somebody’s patchwork quilt or an ugly old coat.

Anders had never known a mage who liked daggers so much. It seemed obscene somehow—or, perhaps more accurately, paranoid.

‘What part of that was supposed to _stop_ me from worrying, exactly?’ Anders asked.

Hawke shrugged. ‘Wildervale’s safe enough. Barriers from dusk until dawn, mage patrols on the city walls—doesn’t it just make you feel cozy and snug?’

‘No,’ Anders said, because it didn’t. It made him feel like he’d missed something important, the world changing in the blink of a drowsy eye.

All the things he thought he knew about Thedas had been turned on their heads, like a well-shaped Antivan hourglass full of white Tevinter sand. Anders could feel that sand rushing below his feet, seeping into his boots and getting all gritty between his toes.

Maybe it was the Rivaini spirits talking, but Wildervale still seemed like a happy accident—a construct of the Fade, something created by a lonely sloth demon, a trick of darker magics and of darkness-on-light. The Warden Commander had been snared in one such pretty trap during his time, a story he told with a shake of his head and a heavy sigh, as though some part of him still yearned for the lie to continue because living it had been _that_ pleasant.

A Free Mage outpost carefully guarded in the Free Marches—it was all too good to be true. But then, Anders had always imagined that a demon’s offer would be just that amount of alluring: something that made him so happy he never suspected what he was being forced to accept.

‘You’d like Isabela,’ Hawke said. His face was stark in profile; Anders could see the rough edges of the fading red streak over his noise, dim light dappling the hidden shadows of his face. ‘You… _he_ always did.’

‘We’re going to need a name for ‘him,’ you know,’ Anders replied, in what he hoped were tones as decisive as he felt. He leaned over Hawke to refill his drink, the bottle’s neck slipping against the rim of his glass with a _clack._ Hawke’s hands were there to steady him at once, one wrapping warm over the back of Anders’s knuckles to retract the bottle. It was a surprise—not the touch but the heat that came alongside it. Anders had been convinced that Hawke was cold and hard as the mountains they’d met in, so it was strange to think of him as just another man, someone with soft skin and dirty, broken nails, with blisters forming along his palms where they hadn’t yet callused from manning the cart’s reins. ‘…The statue, I mean. This apostate…person, the one I remind you of. Otherwise things are just going to be awkward forever. _You there_ and _that fellow_ and all—it’s too clunky.’

Hawke swallowed. From so close, he couldn’t hide the gesture beneath his tarnished gorget, nor the bristling wolf pelts he chose to adorn his back and shoulders. The scent of mud and rain lingered along his skin, something so distinctly Fereldan that Anders could have closed his eyes and been transported back to Amaranthine’s rolling countryside, smelling the spring air and the dirt and the darkspawn blood. He even tried it, but the effort turned into a long, sleepy blink.

Being drunk was another kind of magic, chiefly used for healing. Lulling someone into a false sense of security by numbing the senses always made for a relaxed patient, and bones snapped less easily when a man wasn’t braced for impact.

Still, Anders hadn’t known how badly he needed this particular salve until it was settling into his belly, pitching and rolling like the Waking Sea even as it settled his nerves.

‘His name was Anders,’ Hawke said.

‘ _There’s_ your problem,’ Anders replied.

It would have been a good idea to crawl away from Hawke in that moment, for Anders to remove his knees from the side of Hawke’s thigh and his hand from his shoulder where the fur tickled his wrist. Safe retreats were often considered the wisest tactical option, although the Warden Commander had never been much for tactics when there were broodmothers to extinguish.

Leap into the fray, wait for your mages to freeze a few tentacles, and start hacking away—no time for planning meant no time for fear.

Similarly, Anders had never met a conversation he liked to wade into halfway. It was all or nothing, and the more dangerous the territory, the more eagerly he pushed on, enjoying all the treacheries of words and tongues and banter, a different sort of skirmish from the usual melee.

‘I mean, that must be why you’re having such trouble telling us apart,’ Anders continued, before Hawke could say something sensible and spoil his momentum. ‘If I’m Anders and _he’s_ Anders, it’s only inevitable that you’ll be getting us all swirled around in your head like the dregs in that bottle. We should call him something different—like Boris, or Frederik, or Mister Wiggums. Don’t you think that’s better?’

‘Anders,’ Hawke said.

Anders wasn’t sure if he was being addressed specifically, or if Hawke was simply remembering and confirming an old friend’s name.

‘There are a lot of those, anyway.’ Anders scooted to the far side of the couch at last. The fire in the hearth was still warm, but it wasn’t the same as sharing body heat, making a man sweat instead of easing his chills from the inside-out. The brandy was bracing, the firelight was heavy, and Anders observed the liquor in his glass, a softer reflection than light off the flat edge of a man’s hidden blade. ‘They’re not very imaginative in the Anderfels; too many mountains for that. In fact, if anyone can understand that frame of mind, it’s you.’

‘Because of the Vimmarks,’ Hawke agreed.

‘Exactly,’ Anders said. ‘No wonder I didn’t like it there. The whole ordeal must have reminded me too much of home.’

Hawke shifted, the legs of the couch creaking as he redistributed his weight. ‘Reminiscing can be dangerous. I’ll give you that.’

‘Which is why you should’ve brought a nice deck of cards with you or something,’ Anders said. ‘Or you could bring Varric in here to tell more of his outrageous stories. Claptrap, all of them—I had no idea dwarves were prone to such flights of fancy—but at least it passes the time.’

‘Oh, no,’ Hawke murmured, not moving to finish the contents of his glass. Anders felt the distance between them as though it were made of solid rock, both of them howling at each other from separate sides of a mountain, two opposite gusts of wind. ‘If Varric _was_ here, we’d be up all night—and then we’d _never_ get our beauty sleep.’

*

Hawke left soon after that, as clear an offer as any—the bed was Anders’s for the night, and he felt no pang of guilt at crawling into it, taking it freely and gladly, since by Hawke’s own admission the man didn’t sleep.

It was a comfortable bed, a simple frame and a half-curtain canopy, nestled into a corner near to the fire and far from the window. There was no good reason to let it go to waste. The sheets were clean and they smelled of soap, not animals and grass and sun-warmed dirt, and Anders pushed his face into the pillow and drifted off too easily, the Rivaini spirits helping him along his way.

He left his boots by the bedside for easy access. As an old precaution, a child’s stubborn neediness, he kept his staff on the mattress beside him, tucked through the crook of his arm. It wasn’t the cuddliest of bed-mates, some of the leather-and-feather strappings tickling his cheek while he snored lustily away, but knowing it was there and feeling its warmth—neither body-heat nor fire-heat but something else, primal and necessary as magic was for its mages—soothed him the same as a child’s favorite doll, as well-loved as it was well-worn.

The usual pitfalls of the Fade were as easy and difficult to navigate as ever. Anders was no sailor like this deadly Isabela, with her daggers and her boat and her smuggled brandy, but the texture of the Fade was neither land nor water nor even air. Sometimes Anders felt as though he was swimming through a bowl of soggy oats or gritty pudding.

Whether the Fade was thick and dark or misty and pale depended on the day, a mage’s peculiarities and proclivities, how troubled or how muzzy his heart and thoughts were on the hour of his dreaming.

There were times when those dreams meant nothing at all—just a collection of worries and emotions, a throw-away sentence from as far back as breakfast, an unexpected meeting or a niggling memory—but even the smallest of desires or disappointments could start as a pinprick, one lone drop of water that swelled into an outright flood.

Demons always heard those whispers, discontentment and wistfulness and longing and fear, and there were times when you never knew if the fluffy kitten was there because you liked kittens or there because a demon _knew_ you liked kittens.

Either it meant something more or it didn’t. The uncertainty was what worked its way beneath a mage’s skin in the end.

It wasn’t much wonder Hawke was paranoid—that he liked tangible things and tangible weapons. Anders liked tangible things, too: fuzzy scarves and shiny earrings, boots that didn’t have holes in the heels, comfortable robes and even more comfortable beds. He could still feel those things through the embrace of the Fade, pleasantness anchoring him in one solid place.

Still, all the precautions in the world didn’t for an instant mean he could believe it when he told himself he was safe. At the far-reach of the Free Marches, in a keep-grown city with high walls, near a statue in the center of the town square that wore Anders’s face—no matter where he was, the Fade was everywhere else, and in it he met the lostlings, his lessers and equals and often his betters, shadows and ghosts of those who’d passed his way before.

Anders leaned against the base of his statue with a sigh. Even in his dreams, his blisters were bothering him, though that might have had more to do with his feet being tangled in the blankets somewhere else—not the Fade-walking he was doing, by accident or on purpose.

So far, there was no way of knowing.

The only thing he _did_ know was that he wasn’t alone.

It didn’t feel like a spirit. It felt like another man, just stronger and more confident than Anders had to admit he was. He came walking down one of the side-streets, appearing from around the same corner as the elvhen children playing their elvhen game of knucklebones, and he didn’t try to hide himself.

That was new.

‘I’m sorry we had to meet here,’ he said. His face shifted, then settled into its features, a full mouth and smooth cheeks, pale eyes beneath an elvhen brow. He held a staff in one hand, as few unprepared mages did in the Fade, and Anders couldn’t tell if he was younger or older, if his age even mattered at all. ‘I thought it might be…common ground. Someplace we both know, instead of someplace we might get lost.’

‘Is this a surprise party?’ Anders asked. ‘Are you going to try to seduce me with presents? My very own giant statue?’

The mage smiled, a wistful shadow tugging at his mouth. ‘This isn’t that sort of dream, Anders.’

Names, like spells, like memories, aliases or true ones, could be leveled at a man the same as a blow from a broadsword or a fist of stone from the head of a staff. Anders was starting to wish he’d never gotten drunk with Hawke, that his name itself hadn’t been called into question, forcing him to wonder if he was here because the stranger wanted _him_ —or somebody else.

‘Ah,’ Anders said. ‘…I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude to a potential dream-stalker enemy or anything, but I don’t…actually know who you are. Have we met before? And was I drunk at the time?’

‘I should have a better answer to that by morning,’ the mage said, tone as vague as the colors of the Fade. Even if he wasn’t a spirit or a demon, he certainly talked like one. Anders watched as his gaze passed to the statue of the martyr behind them, sturdy bronze silhouette distorted by Fade-mists. ‘For now, you can call me Feynriel. …That seems easiest, all things considered.’

‘Can I _really?_ ’ Anders asked. ‘You aren’t just saying that? Next thing I know you’ll be telling me I can call you _darling_ —it’s all moving so fast.’ In the distance, he could hear the strains of ghostly wooden swords clacking against one another in pale imitation of the practice yard. Something tickled at the back of his mind, like the brush of a stray feather or Hawke’s gray pauldrons against his wrist. Anders reminded himself of one of Karl’s old lessons, to ask the important questions first and the foolish questions never to garner better answers. He took a deep breath. ‘…Did you make all this? A place where neither of us would ‘get lost?’’

The mage offered a neat half-bow, his heavy, fair braid falling over one shoulder. ‘My master taught me to control my surroundings. I was supposed to wait, but time passes so quickly these days—it almost feels like waste. Something might happen during the in-between, after all, and I was…eager to meet you.’

The something that had been tickling Anders’s mind turned sharp and poked him in the squishy bits. ‘Hang on—did you say your name was _Feynriel?_ ’

The mage turned away, watching the elvhen children play with their knucklebones. They’d appeared again sometime during the conversation, laughter muted but still sweet. He watched them, and even though Anders couldn’t see his face, he felt him smiling.

The cut of Feynriel’s robes was unfamiliar, skirts split with a layered tunic on top and trousers beneath, a shadowy cape over the rest the exact shade of an unpolished summer plum. Studying him only revealed the depths of what Anders _didn’t_ know: about his present company, about Wildervale, about the Vimmark Mountains and how he’d wound up there to begin with—an assortment of coincidences that felt more like the strings of a puppet being plucked to make it dance than pure luck.

All Anders had wanted was a peaceful night’s sleep in a bed made for sleep. This wasn’t what he’d asked for—but then, so little was.

‘It can be difficult, feeling as though you don’t belong anywhere,’ Feynriel said, his attention drawn from the children to Anders again. ‘But _knowing_ you don’t belong… That’s even worse, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I’m not sure, actually.’ Anders kept his eyes on Feynriel’s staff, gnarled wood like a _vhenadahl_ ’s roots spread beneath the streets of an alienage. ‘Knowing something or not knowing something—something pleasant or unpleasant—it all depends on whether or not you prize _sealed fates_ over _crippling uncertainty._ ’

‘Eventually,’ Feynriel said, ‘everyone makes a choice.’

‘Not everyone,’ Anders told him. ‘Not me.’

The Fade’s version of Wildervale shifted against their feet, the ground shuddering like those roots had come to life—or like there was another archdemon buried deep below the surface, waiting for Anders and his fellow Wardens to make their final charge. Blackness rolled down the streets, neat little apostate houses folding in on each other the same as a man folded up a map.

 _Wait,_ Anders tried to say, because he still had so many questions, but the look of calm on Feynriel’s face froze him in place.

‘I’m sorry again that we had to meet here,’ Feynriel repeated. There was a hollow echo to his voice, as though he spoke from behind the shelter of a warrior’s curved metal shield. Anders fell as Wildervale opened up below him, sending him down, down, down into the dark and the waiting monsters and their open hands and their greedy fingers. ‘I’ll see you again, Anders. Very soon, I think.’

It sounded like a promise, but the other side of that sovereign was a threat, and if Anders had learned anything in his time at the Circle, it was _not_ to trust any mages he met while in the Fade, no matter what they offered and no matter how honest they looked.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders eats bacon and Varric shows him a pillow.

‘Blondie,’ someone called, in a warm voice that brought to mind taprooms and glittering golden jewelry. ‘Come on, Blondie, help an old dwarf out. Breakfast started hours ago, and I can’t hold them off the bacon forever.’

‘Whozzit?’ Anders muttered. The air was hot and close under the pillow, which was where he’d jammed his head after waking from Feynriel preying on his dreams like a highwayman in the night. ‘No, sorry. Not dreaming about dwarves—even handsome, beardless ones, broad chesty ones. Too early. Come back never.’

Varric sighed, and Anders cracked open an eye to stare into the narrow slit of light between his mattress and pillow, what wasn’t also covered by the blanket. All he could see was a forest of chest hair, a few stray, silver threads mixed in with the gold, almost winking at him in the bright shaft cast by a sunbeam.

‘Normally, I’d be more than happy to oblige,’ Varric said, in the voice of someone who had a _but_ But we’ve got a special guest all the way from the Imperium, and the thing is—he’s kinda here to see you.’

Anders peeled the pillow off his head and the covers back, joints aching and creaking as he stretched them out. He yawned and almost forgot to cover his mouth with his palm, and glanced around guiltily when his actions revealed his staff tucked in beside him, warm from the press and clutch of his body while he slept.

‘Hey, you think I care what you take with you to bed?’ Varric held up his open hands in an easy shrug. ‘Bianca gets lonely sometimes, too—and so do I. Even in a place like Wildervale, you can never be too careful.’

‘Especially when people ambush you in your dreams,’ Anders muttered, wiggling his toes against the holes in his socks. He shoved his boots on next, wincing when the leather soles pinched the blisters, then tried to comb his hair with his fingers—even though that tactic never worked, simply introducing more flyaways into the mess and tangle, as well as alerting him to the ones that were there already. ‘Tell me, Varric: do I look as horrible as I feel?’

‘That all depends on how horrible you’re feeling,’ Varric replied.

Anders popped the troublesome vertebrae in the base of his back, thumbs pressed above his hipbones, then sniffed hopefully. Varric had mentioned something about bacon and the idea of food—to fill the sour taste left in his belly by Rivaini spirits and Fade-stalking—wasn’t as unwelcome as seeing a dwarf in the morning, no matter how nice and broad and glossy his chest was. ‘Don’t spare my feelings, Varric. Tell me the truth, _without_ coddling me.’

‘All right: you look like something that ox chewed up and spit out,’ Varric said. ‘Maybe from the back-end instead of the front. But hey, it could be worse: you could look dead. …Or you could look like Paxley.’

‘No, _no_ , Varric—I like _beards_ , not mustaches.’ Anders rubbed the stubble on his cheek to confirm the statement, wondering if anyone would trust him with a knife for long enough to shave. ‘Present company excluded, of course. When you have the bone structure, why cover it all up?’

‘Truer words were never spoken,’ Varric said, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Breakfast’s back in my room. We’d have it down in the mess, but…’

‘But you wanted to spare me the discomfort of having to eat my meal in a full cowl and cloak?’ Anders asked. ‘Or…you wanted to spare the cloak from all the bacon grease.’

The warmth from Varric’s hand was welcome, the calluses on his fingertips as generously distributed as the ink stains beneath his fingernails. His touch smelled of metal—Bianca’s scent, no doubt—but also vellum and quill-spines and book-binding. The man was a veritable library and, like all the best libraries, he was full of as many lies as he was truths.

Anders reminded himself to tread carefully while Varric left his side and headed for the door.

‘That, and I’m just hospitable,’ he said. ‘Maybe a little self-centered on top of that. Set in my ways. I like to do things the way we used to do ‘em, and if that means everybody gathering around my hearth and spilling on one of my best rugs from Orzammar…’

‘More of your stories?’ Anders trotted after him, staff clutched in his hand. When Varric looked up and down the hallway, Anders stared down at his boots and the stones on the floor, hiding the bottom half of his face with his collar. ‘That better?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Varric said, leading the way. ‘You don’t look suspicious at _all_ like that.’

‘Plus it’s making my chin itchy,’ Anders agreed.

Despite their precautions, there was no one around to recognize him, the hall still chill from the damp dark of nightfall. Anders couldn’t tell what time it was or if the mages of Wildervale’s keep were off training and laughing and falling in love and doing all the other things that would bring templars down on them hard at any moment. The closer they came to Varric’s room, the more Anders could smell the bacon—Varric hadn’t lied about that, and with each short pace and jaunty whistle Anders’s stomach let out louder and louder growls.

He was just as hungry for breakfast as he was curious about this meeting of the minds—to see if Feynriel would look like he did in dreams, to ask him if they’d really met or if even Wildervale wasn’t safe from the sieges of demons.

If you asked some people, they would have said _especially Wildervale_ —those were the same lovely individuals who thought one free mage was enough to bring the entire structure of the Fade crumbling down around the rest of Thedas.

But it was an awkward conversation to begin. _Hello_ and _fancy meeting you here_ and _by the by, did you break into my dreams earlier or am I currently high on the list for demonic possession?_ was less common an introduction than _pleased to meet you, my name’s Anders, and I swear I’m more normal than I behave in large crowds of unfamiliar people._

The door shut behind him, Varric throwing the latch to lock it. Anders untucked himself from the folds of his robes, feathers tickling his nose enough to make him want to sneeze.

He held back, but barely, that thwarted feeling lingering in his throat and chest. Then, he realized everyone was looking at him, Keran and Fenris and Hawke ranged through Varric’s room in varying stages around a low fire in the hearth. In their midst sat a fourth figure, wearing unfamiliar robes and sporting a familiar braid, the latter long and silky and white-gold in the daylight.

‘Spooky,’ Anders said.

‘Anders,’ Feynriel replied.

‘So…’ Anders cleared his throat. Everyone was still looking at him and that made him want to do something funny, something obvious and memorable, something that would keep their attention while at the same time discouraging it. That was the nature of loneliness, the need to make people look at you at all times, to resent the burden of their scorn when you garnered the wrong sort of attention almost as much as you resented the moment it went away. ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ Anders continued. ‘By the by, did you break into my dreams earlier or am I currently high on the list for demonic possession?’

Hawke—seated by a table, breakfast spread out invitingly over the polished wood—knocked over his glass. It clattered along the length of mahogany and fell on the floor and Varric said, ‘See? What’d I tell you about my poor rug?’

‘I’ll get that,’ Keran said, slipping the napkin from his lap and crossing the room to stem the little waterfall of ale before it could make its way to staining the dwarven geometrics.

‘I’m sorry.’ Feynriel shifted to tuck one leg over the other, narrow back straightening as he turned to face Hawke. ‘I know you all arranged for this to be our first meeting, and I’m sure that would have been lovely and comfortable, but… I’ve found the Fade works much better for these delicate matters. …When you do it right, of course.’

‘Is that so?’ Hawke asked. He hadn’t moved since overturning his cup, either to acknowledge Keran kneeling at his feet or the muddy drink now pooling amidst his eggs. He looked as though he’d been struck by an apprentice’s wayward shackling hex, though there were no glimmers of arcane light just beyond the window and no dark cut of staves being swept through the air.

There was only Hawke, his steady gaze fixed on a spot just over Anders’s left pauldron, staring into the middle distance—same as always.

Anders contemplated shifting onto his tiptoes and inching to the side just to pretend Hawke was looking at him, then decided against such obvious tactics. Varric was standing right there, at the perfect height to see through everything. He might even make a novel out of it, considering what Anders had heard about him and how up-front he was about his search for new material.

‘But I have good news—if anyone’s still interested in hearing it.’ Feynriel folded his napkin into fourths, dabbing one sharp edge at the corners of his mouth. Anders wondered whether there’d actually been any food there to begin with or whether he was attempting to hide the fleeting quirk of his lips.

‘This lot?’ Varric shook his head. ‘You’re playing to the wrong crowd, Feynriel. I’m not even sure if Hawke remembers what good news _sounds_ like.’

‘May I borrow your napkin?’ Keran asked, tugging Fenris’s unused square of cotton away to sop up what liquid had managed to get to the floor already.

As comical as it was, at least he had a purpose. The others were just staring, or trying not to stare, at each other or at the opposite walls, a system of gazes that never landed where they should or offered what they might. Anders wasn’t good at intercepting; avoidance was better, but with so much of it going around, avoidance itself became unavoidable. And that was dangerous.

‘Get on with it, then,’ Fenris said, spiky arms folded to look even more spiky. If Anders strained, he could hear the faint, metallic clink of Fenris’s armored gauntlets tapping against his elbow.

But all of it was a distraction—Keran’s antics and Fenris’s frustration, Hawke’s stubborn silence and Varric’s ameliorations—and it all amounted to the same thing. No one in that room was ready to hear what Feynriel had to say, not even Anders, who was the only person who’d _been_ with Feynriel the night before. The extra knowledge should have been an advantage, but instead it settled like hot lead in the pit of his stomach, an unforged weapon clunky and abandoned. No matter how hard Anders tried to think back to dream-Wildervale and what might have transpired there, the details turned hazy, drawing away from him at the edges like a piece of burning parchment.

‘Anders is not a demon,’ Feynriel said.

‘Well _I_ could have told you that,’ Anders replied, before an awkward silence had time to descend. He could still see Keran beneath the table, the excess liquid dripping onto the back of his hand; he could see the sodden napkin beneath, the bob of his head and the twitch of his shoulders when something plopped onto his neck. Being under the table might not have been the worst hiding place; Anders fought the urge to join him down there, not for a spot of tea but for a drip of ale. ‘In fact, I seem to remember that I _did_ tell you that. Repeatedly. And nobody listened.’

‘He isn’t a demon,’ Hawke repeated.

‘And _he’s_ standing right here,’ Anders said. Just in case anyone had forgotten, he pointed to the floor, his boots planted squarely between two interlocking hexes in Varric’s precious rug.

‘It would be simpler to tell us what the creature _is_ rather than what it is not,’ Fenris said. His eyes were fixed on Anders from beneath the fall of his hair, slender frame rigid with potential movement, as though he was prepared to spring out of the chair at any moment.

There was something about the look that reminded Anders of Ser Pounce-a-lot right before he seized on one of the Keep’s rats. Unfortunately, he didn’t think Fenris would go limp at the idea of having his throat stroked, which meant all Anders’s usual tactics for distraction held no power here.

‘It’s—’ Feynriel began, then caught himself, ‘— _he’s_ not _anything_ as far as I can tell. Not anything other than himself, anyway. He’s not a shade, or a familiar, or a construct. He’s just…Anders.’

‘When you say it like that, it makes me sound like such a disappointment,’ Anders said.

If he kept talking—if he kept his chest moving with the expulsion of air required to form words—then the weight pressing down on his ribcage would be less likely to crush him.

He wouldn’t allow himself to be anything like Hawke—a man turned to stone by the simplest pronouncements.

‘There you have it, then,’ Varric said. He trotted to the table, creating the only movement in the room; his footfalls were the only noise loud enough to break through the pulse at Anders’s temples. Nobody stopped him from snatching a piece of bacon off Hawke’s plate and popping it into his mouth, chewing neatly for a dwarf, wiping his fingers on a napkin instead of his clothes or his hair or licking the grease off with a lusty slurp. ‘Simplest answer’s always the most likely, even if _is_ the most unbelievable. You know, the same principle applies in writing a good story, too.’

‘This is _not_ —’ Fenris began.

‘—the best bacon you’ve ever had?’ Varric sighed. ‘I know, I know. And here I’d been looking forward to it even more than sleeping in a nice bed for a change. Still, it’s better than the nugs we had to fry up summer of 9:42. You remember that, don’t you, Hawke? Don’t tell me it’s slipped your mind, elf—since I distinctly remember _you_ mentioning how it was even worse than fish.’

Fenris said nothing in reply, though he scoffed under his breath. His gaze was the first of many to rest squarely on Anders—his face, his expression, and his shoulders—but it was followed by people less direct and less obvious trying to steal glances, each one practically a barb, the same twinge of stepping on a bramble or finding Northern Prickleweed caught under your robes. Anders didn’t know which was worse, Feynriel’s patient sympathy or Hawke’s outright staring, or the fact that both disappeared whenever Anders tried to pin them down.

Fenris’s blatant distrust was the only thing that didn’t flicker, waver under scrutiny, or turn to something else beyond what it appeared at first glance.

‘Your rug’s saved, Varric,’ Keran said, popping up over the table. ‘At least—I did the best I could.’

Just like that, the tension in the room lost its shape, slipping out through the cracks between the stones, through the whistling spaces between walls and windows. Anders knew he was still the center of attention, but everyone had found his private method for displacing it, pretending they were focused on something else: Varric and his bacon, Keran and his rug, and so on.

‘It’s really that simple, is it?’ Hawke asked.

‘That…probably depends on your definition of simple,’ Feynriel admitted.

Anders bobbed on his toes. The floorboards creaked beneath the soft give of the rug. The bacon smelled good, but he wondered if moving wouldn’t make matters worse, drawing more attention to the person no one could forget but no one could acknowledge.

Anders was and he wasn’t who they thought he was. He wasn’t a demon and that was good, but a demon was an understandable enemy rather than an unexpected stranger. Sometimes it was better to fit someone’s expectations than to go beyond their confines. Anders understood that better than anyone.

He was also hungry and wanted breakfast. He hadn’t slept well the night before, what with the invasion of his dreams by a skilled dream-walker, and no one seemed to care about that breach of trust and faith and Wildervale’s high walls—not as much as they did about how it affected them. Who Anders was, whether or not it made any difference to how he was treated, shouldn’t have been about what other people believed.

But Anders had always known that. He’d long since given up on arguing the point because no one listened when he did.

‘Bacon?’ Varric offered.

‘Not-demons _do_ need to eat,’ Anders replied. His voice sounded small in the room, but at least it was familiar, and he cleared his throat to strengthen it. ‘Thanks for the apologies, by the way. I’m just glad no one tried to cast me back into the Fade.’

The bacon stuck when he tried to swallow; it was something to fill him up, to stand between him and the others, and it did its job on the most superficial of levels. Also, it made Anders want to burp.

‘So, for lack of anybody else having something to say,’ Varric said, taking a pull of Hawke’s remaining breakfast ale, ‘your loveable, loyal dwarf is telling the rest of you to get out. Get some air, maybe. Seems like a nice day.’

‘A walk might do everyone some good,’ Feynriel agreed. ‘Hawke, if you wouldn’t mind…?’

‘Try not to gossip about me too much, while you’re at it.’ Anders scooted around to the other side of the table as Hawke stood, keeping as much distance between them as possible. Fenris stood after him and Keran followed suit, and Anders had to wonder again at the tight line drawn between them, how everyone scrambled to finish whatever Hawke began or at least to accompany him on his course. Anders had never seen such devotion, not even back at Vigil’s Keep; the Warden Commander inspired the occasional act of pig-headed bravery, intensity of spirit a man didn’t know for himself he possessed until suddenly he was in the thick of it, but it wasn’t as consistent as this cult of the mountain rebels. ‘My ears get all hot when people talk about me behind my back, not to mention all the shivers and the sneezing.’

Varric patted him on the arm as if to say _There, there_ and also _Eat your bacon, it’ll make you feel better._ Anders did as Varric suggested, if only because he appreciated the nice sort of attention, and also because it was what he wanted to do in the first place.

Simple man, simple needs, simple breakfasts.

Less-than-simple dreams, but that wasn’t his fault. Not this time.

‘Clear your heads, talk about it all you like. Give Hawke some exercise, ‘cause Maker knows he gets _itchy_ without it,’ Varric said, gesturing toward the door. Keran opened it and the others crowded around it, but they waited for Hawke to make the first move. As though that was natural, or somehow healthy.

Hawke was still looking at Anders, or rather something that might have stood in-between them, a shimmer in the air Anders couldn’t see. An invisible barrier, maybe. It wasn’t over Anders’s shoulder anymore, somewhere just beyond his body, but rather somewhere just in front of it. Hawke’s eyes refused to focus, his jaw hard and his shoulders slack.

‘Oh, come _on_ , Hawke,’ Varric said. ‘It’s not like he’s going anywhere. Let the man eat his bacon in peace. And find a little peace of your own, while you’re at it.’

‘Now, Varric.’ Hawke’s mouth twisted. ‘You and I both know there can’t be any of that.’

‘Dire pronouncements,’ Varric muttered while the others filed out, leaving Anders to a room full of other people’s memories and a moody dwarf.

‘I don’t know about you, Varric,’ Anders said, tucking one of the few clean napkins into his collar, ‘but I’m famished.’

*

Anders refused to think of the time he spent in Varric’s chambers as hiding—not anything worse than he would have had to do outside of Varric’s chambers. He had no interest in covering his face and shoulders with Hawke’s heavy cowl, sweating under Wildervale’s sun and the watchful eyes of its sentries and citizens, pretending to be someone he wasn’t while other people made up their own conclusions about who he was. And he had even less interest in passing under the bronzed gaze of the martyred statue who’d stolen his face, chill in the shadow of a man he didn’t know, holding up a hand in equal parts welcome and warning.

There was something about receiving a disapproving look from his own eyes that gave Anders the creeping-crawlers all the way down from the nape of his neck to the curve of his backside.

‘They’ve been gone an awfully long time,’ Anders said when he could no longer take the silence _or_ the sight of Varric polishing and polishing his crossbow. The bacon had long since been tucked away, half-empty or untouched plates left behind on the table, ale-stained napkins waiting to be cleared off. No one had finished their breakfasts except for Anders, who’d finished three. Sometimes there was nothing else to do but eat what was in front of you to pass the time—and it was better that way than the alternative, with only roots to fill your empty belly and the sound of templars’ approaching bootfalls in the distance.

The growling of Anders’s stomach had given him away on two separate occasions.

‘This?’ Varric braced Bianca sideways on his lap, thumb running over the gleaming wood and glistening metal in a way that could only be termed affectionate. ‘Nah. This is nothing, Blondie. I once lost Hawke for three whole _days_ down near Ostwick. Said he needed to sort things out and _poof_ —just like a rogue, he was gone.’

‘‘Poof?’’ Anders asked, dubiously. ‘He doesn’t really seem like the sort to poof. Glower intensely—now _that’s_ a story I can believe.’

‘You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Hawke can slip away as easy as a shade if you turn your back on the guy,’ Varric said. ‘He might be big, but don’t let his appearance fool you. He’s downright _sneaky._ ’

Anders did his best to imagine a man like Hawke—thick wrists and a thick waist, the corded muscles in his bare arms and the heavy, pointed armor over his leather boots—sneaking away anywhere. But it wasn’t possible; the man was too large for that, larger than life, and the way everyone’s eyes were drawn to him whenever he entered a room seemed to contradict the idea of him as a slippery sort, one who could dart out from under the watchful gazes of his myriad admirers.

Then Anders remembered their time together in the room they hadn’t shared, Hawke’s eyes sliding off him like spring rain down a waxy leaf, never quite meeting their mark. He’d seemed comfortable, but he’d never settled into the soft cushions, either, one arm thrown carelessly over the fading upholstery.

True to form, he’d left without a word before Anders’s head had even hit the pillow. Anders had no idea where he’d gone or what he’d been up to all night.

Maybe there was more truth to Varric’s words than he’d been willing to believe.

‘I know what this is about,’ Anders said. He swirled the dregs of his tea in a chipped china cup, staring into the leaves the way Jowan had taught him during his briefly-held interest in divining magic. Anders’s drink had long since gone cold, but he doubted his answers lay in a wet lump of soggy brown plant-matter. ‘Everyone’s avoiding me because you all think I’m this _other_ Anders, the one who’s standing down there at the heart of Wildervale looking terribly _serious_ and gruffly heroic—and there’s no wonder it’s confusing. The resemblance _is_ striking, I’ll give you that, but there’s obviously been some mistake.’ He laughed, inviting Varric to share in the joke. Maybe all he needed was a reminder that this Anders was the funny Anders, not an Anders who had anything to do with sanctums of healing and salvation. ‘He’s a handsome enough fellow, too—nice, strong nose from the Anderfels—but there are Anders all _over_ the place. Especially _in_ the Anderfels. You can’t throw a rock in Weisshaupt without hitting at least three. …Four, if it’s a big rock.’

‘Blondie,’ Varric said.

‘It’s all just very _unfair,_ ’ Anders continued, hurtling on like a boulder tumbling down into a valley in the Knotwood Hills. ‘You’ve all made up your minds about me before even giving me a chance. I’ve got all this… _reputation_ to consider, only it isn’t my reputation at all. Not the sort of one _I’d_ make for myself.’

‘Blondie,’ Varric repeated.

Anders stood, taking care to leave his cup on the table so Varric’s rug wouldn’t suffer a second indignity so close to the first. Their quarters were small but he needed to stretch his legs, pace to a window and look outside, remind himself of other people for a change. Their problems weren’t nearly as awful, but it was nice to remember they had them, little squabbles in the streets or hot words exchanged behind closed doors.

With his fingers against the clean pane of glass, Anders understood the impulse that had driven Hawke and the others from the room—how a mind so full of reeling thoughts could set the body in motion. Without the simple rhythm of pacing up and down the length of Varric’s room, a man’s limbs could grow frantic.

‘I suppose you think that I blew up this chantry—and then what?’ Anders didn’t pause for a response. ‘Went waltzing through a blood magic time portal that restored my lost youth, making me charming and beautiful again instead of old and miserable? It’s a neat idea, Varric, but since you _aren’t_ a somniari, I’m afraid you’ll have to get up a _lot_ earlier in the morning to pull one over on _me_.’

Anders lost momentum as his gaze passed to Varric’s wide bed, a few ornamental pillows scattered over the neatly-made coverlet. Varric had bothered to tuck the corners in and everything, like no other dwarf in Thedas when it came to being fastidious, but there was one pillow that stood out amongst the rest, something old nestled in between the new. It had a tattered corner and pulled thread and not enough stuffing, cotton mostly-deflated from age and wear over the long years.

Normally, Anders wouldn’t have cared about an old pillow on a dwarf’s bed, but this was the sort of detail—like seeing his face in wrought-iron—that worked like a mirror, reflecting the unexpected and the unexpectedly familiar.

‘Blondie,’ Varric said, for the third time.

‘What is that, Varric?’ Anders asked. His pacing had led him away from the window and toward the bed-frame—but he drew up short with his feet trapped between two dwarven diamonds before he got all the way there.

The patterns on the pillow weren’t dwarven at all, no straightforward collection of brown boxes and hexes; it was faded green-blue with gold thread all but worn away, stitches in the corner mending one of the larger holes. It hadn’t come from Orzammar; it wasn’t a clansman’s heirloom. It was pure Anderfels from design to execution, and Anders recognized the delicate hand behind it, the little birds and flowers that were all but gone now. He saw the arc of a wing and the curve of a petal, the pale colors made even paler with age, a memento from a time he’d never reclaim and a family he’d never known properly. Never wanted to know, either, but at least they’d given him something beyond years in the Circle Tower by Lake Calenhad.

Anders used to think that pillow could keep the nightmares out, that a bit of tatty fabric and feather-down stuffing would chase the demons away. He’d put his cheek against the birds and the flowers and pretended, for a long time after it stopped being true, that it still smelled like his mother. It wasn’t the first time he’d closed his eyes and indulged in something silly, although maybe it was the silliest of all those indulgences—still thinking about a place that wasn’t his and never had been.

He kept the pillow and the name, but that was everything. Or nothing, depending on how you looked at it.

‘That? That’d be a pillow, Blondie,’ Varric said. ‘From the Anderfels, if I’m not mistaken. This guy I knew gave it to me for safe-keeping, and even though I thought it was a downright _stupid_ idea… I guess I figured I owed it to him to make good on that. Even if I didn’t promise, because he assumed I _did_.’

‘How…kind of you.’ Anders licked his lips. His tongue tasted like old bacon and stale breath, and he wanted the rest of the ale, even though getting drunk never solved his worries. It allowed him to forget about them and create new ones—the latter felt more important in the achy morning and the distraction was generally pleasant, even if it came with a splitting headache after.

And for the rest, a stiff elfroot potion could cure so many ills. Any idiot knew that.

‘It would be ridiculous,’ Anders continued, ‘if a _pillow_ was what finally made me believe all of this madness, wouldn’t it?’

Varric pushed himself out of his chair, heading toward the breakfast table. Anders heard him checking all the mugs for something stiff to drink, followed by a sigh of defeat when he couldn’t find even the slimmest of dregs.

‘Keeps Bianca company when I can’t,’ Varric said. ‘Sometimes I tuck ‘em in together and I don’t have to worry about Bianca getting lonely without me. She’s that kind of girl. _You_ know the type.’

Anders pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. Not enough elfroot scent remained on his fingertips from the last potion he’d used—an accidental skirmish in Kal’Hirol, one of those annoyances that almost seemed petty now—and all he could smell was bacon, his sweat, his skin.

If Varric was trying to remind him what true madness was, he’d succeeded. _Well played,_ Anders thought, but both of them shared a look that seemed to imply they thought otherwise.

‘Take a seat, Blondie,’ Varric suggested. ‘You don’t look so good.’

‘It was all the bacon,’ Anders assured him, letting himself be ushered into a chair all the same. ‘You shouldn’t have let me eat so much, Varric—you know I have no sense of moderation.’

Varric whistled, once, sharp. ‘And how. But that’s beside the point right now. If you think I’m not still reeling from all this nug-shit, think again. It’s just that I’m closer to the ground—harder to see me spinning.’

Anders sank into the chair, rubbing his hands against the polished arms. Varric set Bianca aside—Anders’s eyes widened in alarm—along with his polishing kit, and pulled up a seat across the way, feet dangling over the rug, not quite skimming the ground. Anders almost laughed, then hiccupped instead, and that tasted of bacon, too.

‘So,’ Varric said. ‘Now that I believe you and you believe me—any questions?’

‘Just the usual.’ Anders pressed his fingertips into the wood beneath them until his knuckles turned white, then relaxed his grip. ‘Like…what has my life become, and why do these things _always_ happen to me, and were we lovers, and if so how did _that_ work?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Varric asked.

‘No begging necessary,’ Anders replied. ‘It’s a simple enough set of questions. One, because I feel very unhappy all of a sudden; two, because it _is_ incredible how often these things occur to _me_ of all people, what with wardening and talking darkspawn and broodmothers and accidentally traveling through time; and three, because you said he—I— _somebody_ gave you that pillow, and it means a lot to me, and I can’t believe I had feelings for a dwarf! Not that you aren’t handsome, Varric—but I always thought it might be a nice farmhand or a cheerful taproom girl or someone…taller. What _did_ Bianca think about that, anyway? Did she try to smother me in the night? Maybe that’s why I’m—he’s— _somebody’s_ not around anymore.’

‘If only it was that simple, Blondie.’ Varric glanced over his shoulder, almost wary of his beloved crossbow suddenly sprouting ears—and a brain to make sense of the things it heard. Anders envied her, her glossy shine, her devoted owner. He was also beginning to get the impression that, just as Keran could easily be the secret mastermind of the group, Varric could easily be the secret unstable person. He came across as friendly and put-together and then, when you least suspected it, you were being tied up and interrogated for looking the wrong way at his crossbow. It could happen. Stranger things had, in the past few days—and that didn’t even count Anders’s time with the wardens. ‘Sure, Bianca’s the possessive type, but I’m a one-woman dwarf. We were close, but you’re really not my type. Too high-maintenance. Too…heroic. No; I can’t tie myself down to the martyring kind. I’ve got a big heart, but it wouldn’t take much to put a crack in it, and _then_ where would I be?’

‘Rejecting perfectly serviceable lovers for a projectile weapon?’ Anders said.

‘Shhh.’ Varric held a thick forefinger to his lips. ‘Bianca doesn’t like it when people refer to her projectiles. And between her and _Hawke,_ I’d say we’re best off pretending like this conversation never happened.’

‘Hawke,’ Anders repeated. He felt as though he was looking at one of the Warden Commander’s maps, parts missing where his slobbering mabari warhound had torn huge chunks of the parchment free with his teeth, chewing them up to hide them in smallclothes drawers around the keep. Anders could imagine the place where the Blackmarsh connected to the Pilgrim’s Path or the Feravel Plains met the Knotwood Hills, but there was no real proof, nothing to join their point of origin to their final destination, the paths and borders people needed in order to understand how one place fit into the next.

Hawke’s face appeared in the back of his mind, eyes weary, the fine, soft skin around them wrinkled from digging his thumbs in and rubbing too hard. He had a bad back and chapped hands, a scar down his cheek where there’d been no one to heal the wound for him.

If ever there was a man in need of Anders’s sparkle-fingers, it was Hawke. But knowing that didn’t dispel the sudden swirl of nerves in Anders’s gut, where the bacon he’d eaten was currently making him regret ever looking sideways at a pig.

What he wouldn’t give to be able to belch like Oghren on command—a talent as multifaceted as a dwarven diamond, relieving any uncomfortable stomach as well any tense atmosphere in the room.

‘Well,’ Varric said, stretching out his legs, ‘it just so happens this is the sort of story you should be getting firsthand from the man himself, but Hawke’s not exactly in a sharing mood these days. And the way I see it, it’s _your_ story as much as it is his. No point in having a guy like me around if I can’t even remind you of that from time to time. I mean, sure, I do it for the fame and the fortune and _sometimes_ because I don’t have anything better to do, but I’d like to think there’s some honesty in all the lying—at least when it comes to the impulse.’

Anders thought of the ease with which Hawke had given him his cloak; the clever flick of Hawke’s wrist as he’d uncorked his fine Rivaini spirits for two; the quiet pad of Hawke’s footfalls over the stone floor as he crept from the room, leaving Anders to sleep in his bed.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Anders said. He reached out to touch the pillow, then drew back. Even though it was a small thing, it was still too much—worse than seeing the statue, because of how personal it was. ‘He isn’t _so_ bad at sharing.’

‘The truth of the matter is, Blondie,’ Varric said, ‘I may have got that pillow, but it’s _Hawke_ who got…well, everything else.’

‘Everything else.’ Anders knew what it meant, but he pushed that meaning back for a moment more, like parrying a blade with the flat edge of a staff. It wasn’t impossible; some battle mages did it all the time. But eventually the sizes and strengths and materials were too unbalanced and wood always split before metal shattered. ‘But Varric—I didn’t have anything else. Just a cat, but I hardly think I’d been willing to give _him_ up.’

‘You didn’t have the cat,’ Varric said. ‘You didn’t have a damn thing. You _know_ what I’m talking about, Blondie.’

Anders did; he’d read it in all the books. Action, adventure, romance—danger and intrigue and sacrifice. They were all the terms of someone else’s life, real or not, but enjoyable as fantasy without ever leaving the comfort of a sitting room. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be turned to bronze, all the warm, malleable parts of him made stiff to survive the ravages of sun and weather. New insight forced him to understand Hawke’s unyielding posture, why he couldn’t seem to sit still or comfortably even for a moment, always missing something he was supposed to have and something he didn’t have any longer.

‘So Hawke…and…me?’ Anders asked weakly. ‘Or Hawke and…somebody who looks very much like me. Who just so happened to have my mother’s pillow. …And my taste in dwarves. Do you know, the pillow _might_ be an Anderfels trinket—some sort of souvenir they sell at every outpost between Hossberg and Nordbotten. Don’t roll your eyes, Varric—it’s possible. You know that.’

Varric gave him a stony gaze, like the broadside of a gray anvil. Whatever nug-shit Anders was selling, he wasn’t buying it.

‘Don’t ask me for details.’ Varric laced his fingers together over his belly. He was kind to pretend Anders hadn’t just embarrassed himself out loud. ‘Hawke’s not the sort to kiss and tell. But by that token, I guess you can tell there was _some_ kissing going on. If only because Hawke wasn’t telling, and those silences could fill just as many books as I have.’

‘Now that would be something,’ Anders murmured. ‘Selling empty books to people. What a business venture, Varric, but are you certain it would catch on?’

‘Isabela wanted to know, believe me,’ Varric continued. ‘The number of times she asked—the number of times she showed up at Hawke’s place unexpected, dropping by for a visit and picking the locks when nobody answered the door—maybe there’s something more she knew that she didn’t let on. We believed in romance, you see, just…didn’t believe in preserving it the same way. And—thanks to Hawke—I had to make so much shit up there’s no _way_ to sort fact from fiction now.’

‘I’m not a private person.’ Anders tugged at his collar, hooking his fore- and index-fingers underneath the fabric, relieving some of the pressure when he swallowed. ‘I’m sure if you’d just bought me a few rounds, I would have spilled everything.’

‘Don’t think I didn’t try,’ Varric said. ‘I was committed. But it didn’t work that way. All I know is, what you and Hawke had—two high-maintenance mages coming together over something bigger than yourselves but smaller than your cause—it was beautiful.’ Anders stared, trapped by his horror, and Varric snorted. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t give me that look. A dwarf’s not allowed to be a romantic?’

‘The only dwarf I know happens to be in love with farting more than anything else,’ Anders admitted. ‘And I’m here, and I gave you my pillow, but I gave Hawke my heart—’

‘Don’t forget about the part where you gave your body as a host to a spirit from the Fade.’ Varric didn’t flinch, though Anders did; he might even have looked pleased with himself, finding the perfect dramatic timing, until he grimaced after, recognizing the impulse was bad and also evil, better suited to lonely tasks with a quill and an inkwell and sheaf after sheaf of vellum. ‘…Didn’t tell you about that part yet, did I?’

‘Might have been good to know,’ Anders said.

Varric rubbed his palm against his cheek, a friendly sound in the empty room. ‘Hard to believe, though.’

‘Just a little,’ Anders agreed.

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Varric added. ‘I mean—all things considered.’

Anders glanced up to the ceiling and down to the fireplace, from the sunlight streaming in through the window to the clean, heavy curtains, from the far wall back to Varric again. He didn’t believe in ignoring the one person who bothered to look at him, straight at him—but he also didn’t believe in anything else, visions in his sleep and histories he didn’t share, stories he would have enjoyed better if they weren’t about him. He clasped his hands together, and Varric leaned forward to pat his knee.

‘You could read a few of the books, if you’d like,’ he said. ‘The elf’ll tell you I’m shameless when it comes to self-promotion, reliving my glory days the same way sensible bastards like Hawke don’t. Who knows; he’s probably right. And sure, it’s full of hogwash and metaphor and too much alliteration—what can I say? I was going through a phase. But it’s something, anyway. A start. Not to mention there’s nothing an author likes than to talk to a new reader about his stories, right?’

‘You have a collection of your own literature?’ Anders asked.

Varric cleared his throat. He had the decency to look abashed, if only for a brief moment, gone before a dwarven water-clock could tick the seconds twice. ‘Wildervale’s got a pretty fine library. Who knows where the other copies are or who’s still reading them, but like I said—’

‘Glory days and hogwash,’ Anders confirmed.

‘Exactly,’ Varric said.

There was no reason not to do it and nothing else _to_ do. Anders imagined that was what ghosts must feel like: retracing their steps, unable to peek out and say hello without frightening any current inhabitants. He wasn’t the sort who appreciated fresh air and long walks and nature to clear his head; he appreciated the walls around Wildervale more as much as they trapped him within the city, with a statue and only a bare few people who knew who he was—less than they knew who he wasn’t. And there was also a man, practically a stranger, who expected him to be someone else.

Only the dwarf understood.

The dwarf also thought his crossbow was the love of his life.

Anders pushed his hair behind his ear, the same wisp that never stayed put. It floated free before it bothered to pretend it might do what he wanted this time, same as always, without even a slight change for the sake of hope. Anders tried again, then forgot about it—also same as always.

‘Stay locked up in a room reading your fantasies about two friends?’ Anders stood, his knees aching, his ankle giving a familiar twinge of reproach. ‘Sounds better than my usual afternoons. Once you’ve gone up against childer grubs—they tried to feed on my flesh once, you know—you learn to appreciate the little things.’

‘Might as well take this with you.’ Varric held out the pillow, not as gentle as he was with Bianca, but close. There wasn’t even a streak of polish on it, not a stray chest-hair caught in the embroidery.

Anders shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You should hold onto it.’

‘Hate it when I have the same conversation twice.’ Varric sighed. ‘But if it means that much to you, Blondie—I guess I won’t argue.’

‘You’re the best dwarf I’ve ever met,’ Anders told him.

‘Like music to my ears,’ Varric replied.

*


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders reads about the Champion of Kirkwall, then experiences the man for himself.

Anders kept his head down on his way back to Hawke’s room—which was empty—and there was no further incident, just Varric knocking on the door and delivering a pile of reading. ‘It feels like lessons,’ Anders said, staggering under the weight of the bound volumes. ‘Like Karl’s about to pop out from behind a corner and tell me to stop doodling in the margins.’

‘You doodle in _these_ margins—’ Varric began.

‘—and I can expect to take it up with Bianca,’ Anders finished. ‘Yes. I’m aware. You’re just as scary as Karl, even if you are half his size.’

‘Takes a lot of talent to pull that off, actually,’ Varric said, and left with a half-hearted grin.

After that, Anders was alone with his research, a scenario Karl Thekla would have been too clever to orchestrate. Anders’s work ethic was directly proportionate to how many people stuck around to supervise, to be certain he kept his nose to the miller’s stone. Indeed, the Warden Commander hadn’t come along to oversee their business at Kal’Hirol—so Anders had wandered off, sliced his finger open on a shard of dwarven ghost-glass, and ended up more than ten years away, the _ultimate_ act of procrastination.

In a way, everything that had happened after that was all the Commander’s fault, twisted ankle and hero’s statue and assigned reading included. The man should have known better than to leave Anders to his own devices. And now Varric, with his heart of gold and chest hair to match, had made the same fatal error.

He claimed to be one of Anders’s dearest friends, which meant he had even less of an excuse than anyone else. When _would_ people learn?

‘Never,’ Anders said. No one answered because there was no one to answer.

The only option left was to read.

 _The Champion’s story began with the destruction of one home—and his voyage across the Waking Sea to find another._ Anders flipped through the first few pages of the topmost volume, the worn edges of vellum tickling his thumb. Varric’s handwriting was square and sturdy, the printing careful and nearly as dwarven as his decorating. He’d given a lot of thought to who might be reading, and probably wanted to make it as simple as possible for them.

 _Of course,_ unlike _most stories, the Champion’s also began—rather than ended—with a dragon._

‘Oh, goody,’ Anders said, and settled into the couch, knees tucked up and volume one tucked against them.

It was dark outside, shadows slanting long across the floor, when the door finally creaked open and Hawke passed over the threshold. Anders was ensconced in the cushions, bound manuscripts digging against his folded knees and another behind his back, wedged uncomfortably where he’d shoved it in a fit of pique to find the next volume, to learn what happened _after_ the Deep Roads.

There were no broodmothers in Varric’s story—only a sister crushed by an ogre and a brother who contracted the taint and died. Anders had never bothered to think much about how the darkspawn affected anyone who _wasn’t_ a Grey Warden, those lucky individuals who didn’t have to hear their nasty, chittering whispers in the dark, at the back of their minds whenever they traveled underground or simply closed their eyes for sleeping.

The common themes that tied each book to the one before it were the personal losses, great and small, that littered Hawke’s life, and his companions’ lives. The setting could have been better; some of the places began to get tangled once Anders spent too much time with them, and he felt a distant sting at his own introduction. It was all too personal—the mention of a Karl they couldn’t save and a filthy clinic in a place called _Darktown,_ where he worked tirelessly to aid Fereldan refugees for little to no compensation, no praise, no reward, no cozy bed or even a fire, or even a fireplace.

Varric’s Anders might as well have been a stranger, another of Varric’s character flourishes like the noble Aveline or the innocent Dalish blood mage Merrill. Anders liked himself and didn’t like himself; he couldn’t draw a conclusion, the sense of loyalty he felt to someone he had to support combined with the sense of frustration at not being able to guide him, to tell him what to do or how to do it.

Varric was good—Varric was too good—and Anders’s fingers shook as he turned the pages, dreading and anticipating each of his appearances more and more rather than less and less.

He’d been on the cusp of Hawke’s duel with the Arishok, another loss and little gain to compensate, Kirkwall on fire for what had to be the tenth time in the span of a few years and a few hundred pages. _Let’s dance_ , Hawke said—according to Varric—and Anders resisted the urge to roll his eyes before he heard the creak of dusty hinges, saw the shadows move out of the doorway.

It was enough to pull him out of the story, peering over the edge of his book, following the line of Hawke’s back as he stalked toward the fireplace and knelt before the hearth. Orange sparks kindled at his fingertips, lighting the brushwood that had been stacked there sometime in the afternoon. Anders felt something stir within at the sight, the reminder that they were both mages in a free mage city, snapping their fingers to light their fires without having to look over their shoulders first, or struggle with flint in order to make themselves less obvious.

‘Varric gave you his books,’ Hawke said.

It wasn’t a question.

His voice was thin—not breathless but tired, as though he’d spent the day wearing himself down to the point of exhaustion, beyond a place where his feelings could reach him. Anders’s fingers tightened against the leather binding of the novel, holding it between them like an arcane barrier.

He’d honestly meant to stop reading early, to stack the books under the bed before Hawke could catch him with them.

It was too much like cheating somehow—or snooping, or eavesdropping—reading about his life with another man, a life he couldn’t remember, all because he hadn’t had a chance to create the memories yet.

‘Are you joking?’ Anders sat up to remove the thick volume from its place beneath his backside. ‘He practically fed them to me for breakfast, Hawke. Before I had a chance to eat my bacon. Tell me—does it count as a gift if you can’t, literally, refuse it?’

‘Anders,’ Hawke said.

‘Apparently,’ Anders replied. He closed the Arishok’s duel unfinished—it had been endless anyway, so much dodging and ducking and running and shrieking—keeping place with his index finger. He wasn’t ready to let go yet, although words on a page created a barrier of their own, putting distance between himself and _himself_. Maybe it was the distance he craved rather than the knowledge. ‘…Although I don’t know if it _counts_ , since I don’t remember any of this. Dueling an arishok? _Really_? And nobody thought to stop you? Am I right in understanding Fenris actually _encouraged_ it?’

The fire popped at Hawke’s back when he straightened. Then he winced; Anders didn’t know whether it had been a pocket of sap in the branches or a bad joint in his knee, damaged long ago from one of Kirkwall’s sieges or a battle with its Tevinter slavers or, more likely, the aforementioned duel of inadvisable odds and ludicrous measures.

‘Maybe that’s for the best,’ Hawke said. It seemed like a joke, but there wasn’t a hint of humor in his voice. ‘Sometimes I wish _I_ didn’t remember anything either.’

‘You probably wish you could return to your handsome youth too, no doubt,’ Anders said. ‘Did you ever read these? I _think_ Varric _might_ have had feelings for you.’

Hawke pulled a face, the first expression he’d managed to wear since entering the room. It had to mean something important, something good, but all Anders could do in response was lean his elbow against the time-cracked cover of the book in his lap and rest his chin in the palm of one hand. He recognized the expression not because he’d seen it before but because _Varric_ had, and Varric’s Anders, who slipped in and out of the plot with relative ease.

He was always there, always in Darktown, always with Hawke on a foolish mission or lingering by the front door at the end of a long day. He was always aching, too, instead of doing something about his aches, and that was another point of contention, a minor annoyance that made Anders shift in place. At least his shifting didn’t wound him further, hard leather digging hard into his hip.

‘I tried it with Varric,’ Hawke said at last. ‘But he turned me down. Cruelly, I might add. He said it just wouldn’t work out between us—that I was too _high maintenance_ for him.’

‘I know,’ Anders said. ‘I read about it. If you feel any better, he said the same thing to me. I think it might just be one of his lines. He seems the sort—such a heartbreaker.’

Hawke clasped his hands in front of him. They wanted more action even now, stiff as his thumbs looked, weather-split knuckles white around each bloody line. ‘Why _is_ it, I wonder, that people are always turning me down for my own good?’

‘Kindness,’ Anders replied. ‘Maybe too much of it, but still, it’s the only way to let someone off easy. Besides, you dodged a cross-bolt with _that_ one, let me tell you. It would have been more like a threesome than a loving two-way, what with Bianca tossed in. …Did you know your trusty dwarf has a few water-works loose?’

‘Most of my trusty dwarves do.’ Hawke unclasped his hands, shaking them out, one of the joints cracking. He didn’t limp as he made his way across the room to his writing desk and his snifter of Rivaini spirits and his multi-faceted tumblers, but his leg was as rigid as his shoulders, the knee not bending properly.

Wherever he’d been, whatever he’d been doing, it hadn’t been easy.

Knowing Hawke as well as Varric did, whatever clues were offered Anders in the pages, he’d likely rescued three orphans and two apostates, killed ten giant spiders, fought an army of Tal’Vashoth one-handed, tracked down a murderer at the most popular brothel, and sweet-talked the local seneschal—all before garnering himself something for supper.

No wonder he was tired.

He’d had ale with breakfast and he was drinking imported brandy now. Anders wouldn’t judge, not with all the bacon he’d had, the words on the page he’d used to fill himself up so none of his thoughts or _feelings_ could get in the way. He watched Hawke swirl the dregs, staring into them before he drank, followed by the bob of his throat as he tilted his head back and swallowed.

‘You get used to it,’ Hawke added. He might not have been talking about the dwarves; Anders blinked and tried to remember the ones he’d read about, Blubber and Shoehorn or whoever they were, characters who shouldn’t have mattered but kept popping up. Varric hadn’t enchanted anything, and he had a sensible amount of facial hair—from that perspective, he seemed almost rational.

‘That explains so many things,’ Anders said.

‘Varric will like that.’ Hawke poured a second glass and Anders had to remove his finger from keeping his place in the story in order to take it. It was a worthy sacrifice, cool crystal and warm brandy against his grip, something to steady himself by. Soon enough, everything that happened since sunrise would be more like a dream than a memory, a day he’d lived rather than one he was still living. And no _somniari_ could pierce the sanctity of that dream, either, with a calm voice and long, pale hair, searching for answers Anders still didn’t own. ‘You’ll have to tell him all about it—flatter his big ego a bit. Travel’s hard on the poor fellow; the more he whistles, the more you know it’s getting to him. Come to think of it, you’re right—he _is_ one of the strangest dwarves I’ve ever met.’

‘He fits right in with the others,’ Anders said. ‘Maybe you just have a type.’

Hawke’s eyes lifted at that, darker than ever despite—or because of—the unsteady hearth-light. Anders wished they could talk about Varric some more, whether he snored or if Hawke had ever caught him whispering sweet nothings into Bianca’s tiller.

Anders had other questions, too: whether a line of dialogue was true or false, which kisses were real and which had been thrown in for effect, and if Anders was just as annoying in private as he could be with the others. How often his healing was necessary, or how stubborn he was, or how careless—or how stupid and desperate he had to be to accept a deal with any kind of spirit from the Fade, even a familiar one. That sort of thing.

But Hawke didn’t look as though he had a single answer of his own, much less for someone else. He lead people, and that required so much answering from sunrise long past sunset, an implicit understanding that he had those answers no matter who was asking, or what they were asking, or how frequently their questions came.

Varric had given Anders his books for a reason. Self-indulgence was part of that reason, but there was something else—just like there was something else to Hawke’s expression, the amusement and the curl of his lip and now, in the wake of that, the stillness.

‘I haven’t read them, actually,’ Hawke said. He leaned against the arm of the couch, stretching out his sore leg. ‘It seemed a bit…much. I’ve been told I have the nasty habit of self-aggrandizement—not for a while, you know, but these things stick with you. Especially when they’re shouted over the table in a shack with your charming uncle presiding, cheering the opposition on.’

‘And here I’ve been reading about myself all day,’ Anders replied. ‘ _If_ certain dwarves are to be believed, that is.’

‘You know Varric,’ Hawke said.

Anders stared into his glass. ‘Well—in a manner of speaking.’

‘You two were always close.’ Hawke set his glass on the floor, reaching to rub his knee with the heel of his hand. ‘Makes a man wonder things about a healer and his favorite dwarf. …Or a dwarf and his favorite healer.’

Anders pressed his bottom lip to the rim of his glass, tongue running along the smooth edge. He watched Hawke until he couldn’t stand it anymore, sweet Rivaini spirits sending a flare of warmth through his body that bacon and simple ale couldn’t hope to replicate.

‘Oh, we have a kind of understanding, Varric and I,’ Anders said. He slid over on the couch, eating up the distance Hawke had been so careful to leave between them. ‘We both appreciate the finer things in life—wine, women and song. And stories, I suppose. I’m grateful Varric didn’t take a wrong turn in life and become a bard. Can you imagine having all this _sung_ to you?’ The overstuffed cushions squeaked beneath him, ruining the stealth of his approach. Without meeting Hawke’s eyes, Anders leaned down, hand resting against Hawke’s leg through his trousers. ‘Stop being ridiculous. _Now_. It’s painful for those of us who have to watch you.’

It was as simple as breathing to draw on the well of spirit healing within him, a grander tapestry with so many little threads, pale green fire glowing from the center of his palm. Anders guided it toward easing the stiff muscle of Hawke’s thigh and soothing the aching joints where they’d swelled. It was a more temporary magic than healing a wound—Anders could stitch together cuts and mend bones but he couldn’t turn back the clock on damage done over time. Years of hard living did things to a man and Anders was no demon from the Fade; he didn’t promise to smooth out the wrinkles in an aging expression or exchange eternal youth for free passage to the waking world.

That didn’t mean one had to forego magic entirely. If there was anything Anders couldn’t abide, beyond stingy portions of ale and templars with no sense of humor, it was a mage who refused to take advantage of his gifts.

Hawke grunted softly, the strain easing from his leg as Anders moved closer, wrapping his other hand beneath Hawke’s knee at the base of his thigh. His skin was warm through the worn fabric of his trouser, and Anders felt the muscles in his calf twitch as he rolled his ankle, moving his leg without shifting free of Anders’s grip.

‘Never really mastered the healing touch, myself,’ Hawke said at last, settling back against the couch like a man who recognized when to retreat. It was a lucky tactic, because Anders wasn’t confident in his ability to wrestle the man down for a good healing—even counting his notorious Warden stamina in his favor. ‘That was always Bethany’s purview.’

Feeling Hawke’s eyes on him, Anders made the mistake of looking up. His gaze was sharp beneath the sweep of his silver-threaded bangs; his eyes didn’t match the warm, whiskey-mellowed tenor of his voice at all.

‘Bethany.’ Anders swallowed, wishing he had a third hand to reach for his drink. ‘…Your younger sister?’ His fingers tightened against Hawke’s leg, as though all the stiffness he’d coaxed out of the limb was being drawn into his own hands, tightening the joints at the knuckles and balling in his blood. ‘Varric…didn’t have that much to say about her, beyond that.’

‘That’s probably because Varric never met her,’ Hawke said. He shifted his knee out from under Anders’s hold, then leaned down to wrap a steady hand around his arm, pulling Anders back toward the couch.

Anders felt a slim pulse of heat ripple through him at the touch, even meaningless as it was. It had been a long time since anyone went out of their way to touch him—despite how shameless he’d been trying to reel in Nathaniel Howe. The rogue was slippery, as all rogues were; Oghren was likewise immune to flirtations, Velanna more mean-dangerous than fun-dangerous, Sigrun way too short. Anders’s mind was still clouded by the years Hawke had lived with _another_ Anders, spending quiet moments in his clinic in Darktown or touching each other under a table at the Hanged Man. Even though Varric had never gone into the details of their relationship, not beyond the first few kisses and the subsequent understanding, he was a clever enough storyteller to appreciate that what went unwritten was nearly as real as what made it onto the page.

Hawke and Anders had been lovers. They were both grown men, the times dangerous, their needs obvious. Varric left the proper blanks and Anders knew how to fill them.

He also knew what that other man would have done: leaned into the gesture easily, maybe tucked himself in at Hawke’s side, against the fur and the leather, smelling his soaps and the clean sweat on his skin, the sunlight still trapped by cotton, the wind and the promise of approaching rain. With all those details, the fire in the hearth and the cozy cushions, it was a tempting prospect—something Hawke might allow; something Anders might want.

There was a real man in there beneath the walls he’d built, higher than the manned barracks surrounding Wildervale. But the blanks Varric had left about the soon-to-be champion of Kirkwall were less obvious than his other accounts; some of the lines felt real while some didn’t, all of it designed to make the man accessible rather than human. Anders was suddenly curious to know him rather than to know _about_ him; the distinction was just as genuine as Hawke sitting in front of him now, flexing his leg to test the new agility in each placated muscle.

‘Didn’t it occur to you to leave Kirkwall sooner?’ Anders asked, folding one leg beneath him, letting the other nudge up against Hawke’s. ‘It was always catching on _fire_ , for one thing. I’d think that might seem like an ill-omen. I mean, I know Ferelden was bad, but it only had one bitty Blight, whereas Kirkwall…got everything else.’

‘Varric’s been known to exaggerate,’ Hawke admitted. ‘Small dwarf, big lies.’

‘So Kirkwall _wasn’t_ always on fire?’ Anders asked.

Hawke cleared his throat. ‘No—that much is true. Did he write about the smell of Lowtown at night, too?’

‘Green gases rising from the sewers and everything,’ Anders said. ‘Almost made me wish I didn’t have breakfast.’

‘That’s the one.’ Hawke sighed, neither wistful nor nostalgic, without any of the false fondness nostalgia implied. It was simply missing something that was, something that was awful and an awfulness that time or distance couldn’t hope to erase, the truth of a terrible city Hawke clearly loved anyway. Anders wondered if the same had been true of their relationship; if you lived in a place called Darktown you had to start smelling like a place called Darktown, and Hawke was the sort of man who appreciated something despite or because of its green gases. A man wasn’t a city, but both could represent things and both could _be_ things, and Hawke’s tastes obviously ran toward the eclectic, the incomprehensible, the absurd. ‘Kirkwall wasn’t happy with just one or the other. No—it had to have the gases _and_ the fires, the rioting qunari _and_ the blood mages _and_ the crooked templars. It couldn’t just have a mad Knight-Commander or a desperate First-Enchanter. It had both. It had more than both. It had…everything.’

‘You miss it,’ Anders said.

Hawke shook his head. ‘I miss the Hanged Man. There’s a difference.’ He paused. When he stretched his leg out before him, Anders was pleased to note that the joint in his knee didn’t pop loudly. ‘I miss the porcelain tub in the old estate—now _there’s_ something to miss.’

‘More than the green gases,’ Anders said.

‘And the rioting qunari and the burning city,’ Hawke agreed.

‘At least you have your priorities in order,’ Anders told him.

Hawke snorted softly, complete with a crooked grin—a sharp, white flash of teeth against his dark beard. ‘It’s been a long time since anyone’s paid me _that_ particular compliment.’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Anders leaned closer, listening for hints of creaking or cracking, the sharp intake of a man’s breath when a muscle ached suddenly. None came. Anders knew he’d done his job right, but he didn’t pull away again. Hawke was feeling talkative and Anders was feeling lonely—or maybe it was the other way around, though Hawke was still grinning and Anders was always talkative. There was something that brought Hawke back here and something that brought Anders here in the first place—and Varric was a wicked dwarf with clever turns of phrase, a wicked writer who knew how to make a man want what he read and need what he couldn’t have. ‘First the porcelain tub, then the gases, and close after that the rioting and the fires. You know, that’s always been _my_ list, too. We have so much in common,’ Anders added.

Hawke laughed.

It wasn’t pretty.

His eyes were—in the sad way—but his mouth was hard and almost ugly, his jaw tighter than any inflamed knee. It wasn’t something Anders could heal with his hands but it _was_ something he could heal with his lips; he licked them, tasting the brandy still stained against the flesh.

That flavor had a color, the same color as the firelight reflected in Hawke’s eyes, and Anders was a healer before anything else. It was the one detail he could recognize amidst all the changes, the character Varric liked enough to be honest about—unless that, too, was a fabrication, a pretense to move the pre-determined plot along.

The necessity for such complex analysis made Anders’s head ache, probably the same way Hawke’s knee did.

Books had meaning and impact and consequences; stories could convince a man to act on his own and histories put all sorts of ideas into his head. Anders knew all that, foolishness and carelessness and the power of influence, but just because he could recognize something was stupid didn’t always mean he wouldn’t do it. He could kick himself about it later, soft-booted toes smacking against his ankles; for now, Hawke’s mouth needed attention just the same as his knee, and Anders was the only one there to give it to him.

The way Hawke was looking at him didn’t help, recognizing and searching by equal turns, seeing that person standing between them but trying—or so Anders thought—to see through that person, too. Anders did and didn’t feel like a ghost with Hawke; he did his best not to think about being nothing more than a statue and a collection of memories, some fond and some less-than, of actions that were now history and choices that were now stories. And Hawke did his best not to make that obvious, even though it creased the lines in his brow deeper, making the uneven flecks of gray threaded through his beard and hair stand out more obviously than when they were hidden in shadow.

Hawke lifted his glass. He drank deeply, like a man looking for a potion when what he needed was a healer’s touch.

When the glass was empty, Hawke set it down and took Anders’s face in both his hands, thumbs against the corners of his mouth. Anders’s breath caught in his throat, the subject of such unflinching scrutiny that it was more of a violation than a dream-walker walking straight into his dreams.

People were always blaming magic for human impulses. Magic did make them seem larger, but it wasn’t because of magic that people did terrible things or wanted to do terrible things, or looked to demons for answers they couldn’t find anywhere else.

‘Not a demon,’ Anders whispered.

‘And yet I almost wish you were,’ Hawke replied. ‘…No offense.’

‘None taken. I _think_.’ Anders shifted forward, practically in Hawke’s lap. Hawke had disappeared for a reason, had filled his day up with everything else so he wouldn’t have to do this—so he wouldn’t have to look at Anders at all. Now that there were no excuses, features still clear even in ruddy firelight, Hawke neither flinched nor turned away, every ounce the champion in Varric’s stories, even if his heroic actions were now in miniature. He faced Anders just the same as he faced the Arishok—but Anders wasn’t an enemy, and that was the problem. ‘If you say _let’s dance_ , though—’

Hawke said nothing of the sort. His breath snared somewhere between his throat and his lips and Anders kissed him then because waiting was awful and curiosity was stronger than reservation. They both wanted it as much as they were avoiding it.

It was better to rip off the bandage and see for themselves what lay raw and unhealed beneath.

Hawke made a strangled sound of surprise, giving way to Anders’s advance in an instant, his mouth warm and easy despite the brittle way it shaped itself against an unforgiving jaw. His lips half-parted where he’d been trying to breathe; his hands rose to Anders’s shoulders, resting there, neither drawing him closer nor pushing him aside.

It was the lack of rejection Anders needed most, the knowledge that he hadn’t misread the situation. People were so much more difficult to follow than stories. They could change their minds without having to explain why, without signifying the course of their thoughts in black ink on a sheet of stained vellum.

Anders swiped his tongue over Hawke’s lower lip, his own scratching against the bristling hairs on Hawke’s chin. It seemed an easy thing to close the distance between them, Anders straddling Hawke’s lap all too capably—that might cause him shades of embarrassment later, but for now effortless was uncomplicated, unhindered, appreciated by all.

It took practice to do that sort of thing and not get his robe-skirts tangled around his knees, a detail whose meaning Anders didn’t think Hawke would welcome anytime soon.

‘Anders,’ Hawke murmured, and it wasn’t quite the same as hearing someone else’s name in the midst of an embrace.

It didn’t bear thinking about, not now or not yet, not with Anders fighting to keep his balance in Hawke’s lap, fighting to keep from doing anything unseemly or juvenile, like rocking their hips together. Self-control was a difficult act for Anders to embody at the best of times, even when he was comfortable and not surrounded by strangers who knew him and a future life he didn’t understand. But it seemed important to make the effort—if not for himself then for Hawke, the specter of the man in Varric’s books, the specter of the man who haunted Wildervale’s very foundations.

Anders drew his hands up Hawke’s chest, over the sharp metal buttons that lined his ribs, the leather straps that connected his steel gorget side to each, the soft, luxurious pelts of his pauldrons. It was no more than a silly, romantic gesture to cup his palms against Hawke’s jaw, fingers curling in his hair at the nape of his neck, but Anders did it anyway, nipping and sucking at his lips as he deepened the kiss.

Hawke needed this. It wasn’t _just_ a selfish action—spurred by Anders’s petty desires and even pettier loneliness, his need to feel something in this unfamiliar place, a world that wasn’t his.

Hawke’s hands dropped to Anders’s waist, fingers steady at the small of his back. He drew Anders closer, holding him instead of merely accepting his presence there. Anders shifted his weight, legs spreading wider to make room for Hawke’s lap between them. He could feel the rolling tension of Hawke’s muscles beneath, the telltale warmth of a man coming to life for the first time in years. It was a token of the same ease with which he’d moved his bad leg spreading to the rest of his body—as though Anders’s healing touch had started a chain reaction, heat catching like summer fire in Feravel through ligaments and veins.

Sharp teeth nipped at the corner of Anders’s mouth where his skin was sensitive, the bite followed by tongue, a kiss to apologize for the soreness with a gentler touch. It was a hungry kiss, Hawke’s attention focused and complete, as though he meant to take him in starving and whole—the very opposite of the lazy disinterest he’d shown that morning’s bacon.

Some men required more than simple sustenance to keep them going. Judging by the feel of Hawke’s hands on Anders’s back, fingers tight enough to tear the delicate fabric of his robes, he’d been living as a starved man for some time.

It was Anders who broke the kiss first, leaving Hawke panting and bemused. There were glints of gold in his brown eyes, bright as a split sovereign. He stared at Anders like he was seeing him for the first time instead of the second.

It was all too much at once, too difficult to meet a look like that head on. Just that morning Hawke couldn’t even glance in Anders’s direction, instead mapping all the places in a room where Anders wasn’t. Those instincts didn’t change between a sunrise and its sunset.

Anders bent his head to kiss and suck at the hollow of Hawke’s throat, the pulse point hidden at the side of his neck, suddenly determined to leave a mark behind he’d know was his. Healing left its own marks in that it abolished others but no one ever noticed the absence of injury; it was the scars they felt, the wounds they remembered, the pain they had rather than the pain they didn’t. Anders couldn’t replicate the stink of Darktown that might have clung to Hawke’s clothing after trysts with another man—and he couldn’t imitate that man’s sterling convictions, either.

He’d have to leave his own lasting impression—a new memory Hawke wouldn’t be able to forget.

Anders had never considered himself the possessive sort—owning things was only a concept in the Circle, never a reality, and he found jealousy boring after the first sharp twists in his chest to his gut. Yet here he was, determined to leave Hawke with more than the brand on his arm, a tattoo that looked like the remains of an old injury, painted in blood red below the handsome curve of his bicep.

‘Nice tattoo,’ Anders said, trying to catch his breath.

It wasn’t what he meant.

It wasn’t what Hawke wanted to hear either, not by the looks of things. His face twisted and that ugly shadow returned. Anders recognized the motives, that there was a script he didn’t know and hadn’t stuck to, and now the moment was ruined. He always did that, but not always for the same reasons. Hawke loosened his grip just enough for Anders to slide away while still maintaining his dignity, a cat licking itself after it missed an easy jump.

If he squeezed his hands together hard enough, Anders could pretend this was just one more interruption, the same embarrassed pleasure as ever—caught in the act behind the most boring section of the Circle’s library, everyone deciding to look the other way, no one deciding to look at one another. He could pretend the sheepishness he felt was the sole reason for the heat on his cheeks and flushing his throat, hot beneath the collar and the feathers, red as beet-dye on laundry-day.

The fat pillows huffed beneath Anders’s shifting weight. Anders heard the joint in Hawke’s knee pop again, because even magic couldn’t heal everything.

He hadn’t done as fine a job as he’d thought, as he’d been so ready to congratulate himself for earlier.

Anders wanted to say something; words were meager balm, but the right ones numbed the hurt and kept old aches at bay. The wrong ones were sharper than lances, dealing more damage than a rogue’s swift daggers or poison-tipped arrows.

Anders sighed instead, tapping his thighs with his fingers.

‘I suppose that was awkward,’ he said, when the silence was too much for either of them and the wrong thing became a better option than nothing at all.

‘People always think the tattoo’s more impressive than it is,’ Hawke replied. ‘So, Varric’s stories—they must be _very_ good.’

‘Probably not as good as he thinks they are, but either way…’ Anders scuffed his heel over the carpet, no dwarven diamonds stiff-blocked in dark thread for him to count out to calm down. ‘We shouldn’t tell him. He’ll get a big head—bigger than he has already.’

He chuckled at the idea. Hawke didn’t. The burn of Hawke’s beard around Anders’s mouth remained, a faint heat he wanted to touch with his fingers but couldn’t draw attention to. They both stared at the fire and neither of them apologized.

‘I’ll go,’ Hawke offered. ‘It’s a good hour for a walk, anyway. Always a good hour in Wildervale. The weather here does wonders for your constitution—if it doesn’t kill you first.’

‘No,’ Anders said. ‘Everyone needs sleep sometimes, despite what you seem to think. If you’re trying to get out of a dream-date of your own with Feynriel… No. _I’ll_ go.’

‘Go where?’ Hawke asked the question almost as if he wanted it to signify something else—but it wasn’t the same as hidden meaning on a page. It wasn’t dialogue that wound its way in circles while both parties understood and cared what they were trying to say as opposed to what they actually did. That sort of tactic didn’t apply in real life, and there wasn’t time to read and re-read and laugh at all the quiet secrets, what Anders could see that the characters couldn’t. ‘Anders—’

Anders winced at the name. Hawke felt it too, and Anders heard him rubbing at his jaw, pressed in the curve of his thumb and forefinger, bristling hair scraping along soft skin. He tired of it eventually but Anders had no end to energy he stored for pointless actions, adjusting his collar and smoothing his robes along his thighs. When he stood, Hawke didn’t reach out to catch him, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees instead.

‘I’ll be careful,’ Anders said. ‘It’s not as though I have anywhere to go. I’ll _probably_ hide in the cellars and talk to the rats. Or have a chat with Varric—that would be more comfortable, wouldn’t it? The dwarf has an unhealthy obsession with pillow-collecting, but it’s cushier there than it is here, I’ll give it that.’

Hawke sighed. He sounded tired; Anders didn’t blame him. ‘I’m sure the rats will be _so_ disappointed.’

‘They’ll never know what they’re missing.’ Anders gathered the finished books into his arms, holding them close to his chest. They didn’t have arms of their own, strong and braced with lean muscle, and they weren’t warmed by blood, ink too cool and dry to heat the paper. They had sharp angles, edges that didn’t soften body to body, and as Anders headed toward the door, Hawke made no move to stop him.

He might have stopped someone else, but Anders had managed to suck the energy out of him after trying to stuff it all back in. He’d missed an opening somewhere, a tear in the fabric of everything, a good fissure or a better crack. Like in a festering wound, that sort of fever turned deadly fast—and if a man wasn’t careful, he spent more than he saved.

It was the story of Anders’s life. At least _was_ his life, and not someone else’s—a different story with a champion of green gases, house dwarves and clinics and buried fortunes, a grand bed with a grand canopy drawn tight to protect its owner’s privacy.

Hawke still hadn’t turned around by the time Anders slipped out, nearly dropping half of Varric’s _oeuvre_ in an attempt to shut the door behind him. He saw the back of Hawke’s head crowned black and gray and the swell of his shoulders as he breathed.

They were little details, the sort that didn’t make it onto the page, but Anders wasn’t heartened by the knowledge that Varric hadn’t gotten anyone right—that there wasn’t anything complete anywhere and all the answers he’d been looking for turned out to be more questions.

He should have been expecting it, but somehow these things always took him by surprise.

*


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric breaks it down; Hawke leaves; Anders actually tries to keep busy; Keran might be evil.

Varric was stoking the fire when Anders came in. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said.

‘How did you _do_ that?’ Anders asked, unburdening himself at last, Varric’s heavy volumes set in an uneven stack on one of his dwarven sitting tables. ‘I didn’t even say anything! I’m just here to return your books. Nothing happened, but even if it did, there’s no way _you_ could know about it.’

‘Oh, _Blondie._ ’ Varric shook his head. ‘Even if I was bluffing, you just told me everything I needed to hear. This is why you’re no good at cards.’

‘And how can you _possibly_ know that I’m terrible at cards?’ Anders asked, before the sewing needle dropped. ‘…Ah. Of course. Silly me. I must have missed the chapter where you lot stripped the poor, heroic apostate from the only coppers he had to his name. Conveniently left that one out to make yourself look better, did you? Varric, you incorrigible shyster.’

Varric sighed, stirring the coals in the hearth with an iron poker stained by ash. The flickering light reflected handsomely across his broad features, shadows settling beneath his heavy brow and along the strong line of his jaw. It was a pleasant sight, but it didn’t stoke Anders like the embers of a dying fire, not like Varric stoked the embers of his fire now. That was a feeling he’d come to associate with Hawke—and watching Hawke cast long shadows in the room they no longer shared. Anders didn’t feel the same quick cut of heat in his chest, nor did his stomach twist in pleasure when Varric looked his way.

There was something about Hawke’s gaze on his face—and Hawke’s gaze alone, no matter who else was staring at him—that made Anders feel as though he’d swallowed a school of trout. They were inside him now, flipping and flopping about, slippery-scaled bodies winking silver as they thrashed their fletched tails.

Being around Varric had the opposite effect; it stilled the fishy anxieties scale by scale.

Maybe that was the reason they’d never worked out as lovers. Varric could cry high-maintenance all he liked until all the pigeons in Ferelden came home to roost, but if a person didn’t make Anders feel just a _little_ physically ill whenever they came near, there was no hope at all for romance.

That, and the dwarf was honestly too flashy. Anders knew he’d never accept the idea of entering into a relationship with someone who had more earrings than he did.

‘You’re changing the subject,’ Varric said.

‘Am I?’ Anders asked, turning away from the volumes of history at last. ‘How clever of me. That must be because whatever we were discussing before made me uncomfortable. I can’t remember what it _was,_ and also, I think bringing it up again would be obscenely rude.’

‘I wish I could do that, Blondie.’ Varric straightened, setting the poker to one side and dusting off his hands. ‘Believe me. You think I like being cursed with this _insatiable_ curiosity?’

‘I think you _do_ like a good story,’ Anders said. He settled onto Varric’s couch, which didn’t squeak tellingly beneath him. The pads of his fingers were streaked gray with old dust and older ink, from tracing over countless pages about a life he hadn’t lived and a life he didn’t plan on living. Anders balled his hands into fists, resting them against his knees. ‘But unless you’re looking to hear how I’ve ruined my good standing with your peerless leader and I might as _well_ be a desire demon now—after I’ve only _just_ managed to prove my innocence!—then I’ve got nothing for you. You’ll have to make it up for yourself—except no one will want to read it. It sounds far too depressing.’

‘Everyone loves a tragedy,’ Varric replied. ‘And the sad stories are some of my most popular works.’ He dropped into a comfortable-looking chair, with leather cushions and broad, wooden arms. Fingers steepled beneath his chin, he fixed Anders with a look that pierced like a bolt from Bianca herself, the sort of act Varric might consider cheating. ‘Lucky me, I just so happen to have a surplus of them. …So it was _that_ bad, huh?’

‘No.’ Anders plucked at a stray thread in the worn cushion beneath him. There was a little bit of fluff poking out from the sofa’s side, the hole growing wider by increments whenever Anders tugged it. ‘Quite the contrary. The good things are always the bad things, and the best things are always the worst. Tell me, Varric—why is it that the people you _shouldn’t_ kiss are, without fail, the ones who just happen to be brilliant at it? Does that seem fair to you?’

‘If you’re looking for fair, you aren’t going to find much to satisfy you _here_ ,’ Varric said. ‘Just an observation from an old storyteller. And if you’ve got time for another—I’m betting you’re not here because you _don’t_ want to talk about it.’

Anders remembered the look on Hawke’s face, how the light in his eyes extinguished when he realized who he’d been kissing. It wasn’t something he was keen to relive, even with Varric, who probably knew that without confirmation from Anders in the first place.

‘You’re right,’ Anders said. ‘I’m here because I need somewhere to sleep.’

Varric blinked, not all the way toward surprised, just somewhere in the realm of comfortably taken aback. ‘Why, Blondie—and here I thought you’d never ask.’

‘Don’t get cheeky,’ Anders said. ‘You have all those pillows—one of them mine, in a manner of speaking—and I happen to like pillows. If I stayed in Hawke’s room Hawke _wouldn’t_ stay there, and since he spent the night wandering already, I thought it might be fun to mix it up. There’s a reason you spell ‘routine’ with the word ‘rut’ somewhere inside of it, and I happen to like keeping people on their toes.’

‘You’re wooing me.’ Varric tapped the center of his chest with blunt fingertips, also stained, by soot from the fireplace and ink from his writing. ‘Getting me right here. Don’t stop—this is _just_ how I imagined the moment would always go. Such poetry! I should be taking notes.’

Anders chuckled despite himself and despite realizing the whole thing was a ploy on Varric’s end to get him to loosen up. Laughter wasn’t the best medicine—not for serious burns, broken bones, blood loss and delirium—but when it came to moods, an irreverent dwarf could prove himself a better healer than the actual healer in the room. Anders tried not to feel personally affronted by the knowledge or too jealous of its effect. It was a skill that went without praise even more often than Anders’s back-up did, the things people relied on based on assumption rather than appreciation.

‘Varric, I can’t take it any longer,’ Anders said. ‘I can’t hold back.’

‘If you’d just said so in the first place,’ Varric replied, ‘I never would’ve turned you down. How can I resist that face? Besides,’ he added, not skipping a beat, ‘Hawke’s not the sort to get too much sleep these days. Maybe leaving him a bed might remind him of how nice it is to get some shut-eye.’

‘Not to mention the protection _I’ll_ need from any more nighttime visitors,’ Anders added. His lips twitched and Varric shrugged, half-apologetic and half-ruthless.

The dwarf was many things, many more things than dwarves were in general, but he seemed reliable, just the right amount of compassionate. He understood people but he didn’t make excuses for them, and that gentle balance was probably what made his prose so convincing.

‘I’m a dwarf, not a Fade-sentinel.’ Varric allowed himself a grin, but Anders recognized the expression better now: something just as tired as Hawke, something that chose to show what it was by being everything it wasn’t. Happy. Relaxed. Easy-going. Underneath that was a weariness Anders recognized; he shared the result, if not the reasons. He’d felt it whenever he was on the run, on the move, dogged by templars at his heels and seeing nothing but shadow on more shadow in the dark, not knowing which shadow was his. He frowned at the idea and Varric just grinned harder. ‘Imagining running into me in the Fade, huh?’

‘I’m sure Feynriel could make it happen,’ Anders said.

‘Now I _know_ I should be taking notes,’ Varric replied. ‘You ever consider collaborating? I did a whole series with Isabela once—raunchier stuff than usual, only sold to a _specific_ market—but we made a lot of people happy. And isn’t that what it’s all about?’

Anders couldn’t have agreed more.

Being happy was the only worthwhile pursuit; the trouble was all the other things that came in between bouts of being happy, like bouts of regret and bouts of jealous husbands and bouts of paying for the mistakes you’d made the night before. Being happy could only be acquired in small increments; when you had it you wanted more of it, and so it contradicted itself as much as Hawke contradicted himself, the man he looked for and the man he hadn’t found.

Anders sighed.

‘I hear you,’ Varric agreed.

‘I hope you know this arrangement comes with a demand for bedtime stories.’ Anders stood, stretching his arms, popping something in his neck, easing the tension in his jaw with the press of his thumb. Then, he trotted around-back of the couch and gathered a few extra pillows and a folded blanket—keeping himself busy instead of asking all the questions that still bothered him or demanding to know about every moment in-between the scenes Varric had written. Understanding couldn’t happen all at once. Maybe it wouldn’t happen at all. For now, he was tired, the small of his back sore, a long night on a long couch awaiting him. He left his old pillow behind on purpose because it belonged on the bed with the rest, too old to relearn Anders’s weight and body so many years later. He didn’t want to confuse it or upset the order, or do anything other than pack other safe pillows all around him and sleep by the dying fire until morning. ‘I want to hear _everything_ about the dashing dwarf sentinel rescuing the lonely apostate from the Fade.’

‘People are never gonna buy it,’ Varric warned.

‘You know, I never really cared if something was believable.’ Anders yawned, tucking himself in and drawing the covers up under his nose. He stared at Varric from beneath the hem of the blanket; it smelled clean and fresh and not at all like natural Kirkwall gases, and he smiled against the weave, hot breath trapped by the fabric. ‘Just as long as it made me feel all swoopy inside. I suppose, as a writer, that offends you?’

‘Not at all,’ Varric said. ‘Come to think of it, somewhere along the line, I started trying to make _too_ much sense of things. Loss that natural inclination towards whimsy. Isabela leaving probably had something to do with that.’

‘Maybe it’s Hawke’s fault.’ Anders yawned again, this time snuggling down. He saw Varric get up and cross around to the bed, shucking his boots and dropping in heavy. ‘He must have run out of arishoks to duel _eventually_.’

‘He found other stuff, Blondie,’ Varric said. ‘To fight, and to blame himself for.’

‘Let’s start in the Fade,’ Anders suggested, shutting his eyes tight. ‘The handsome spirit-mage finds himself in a tight spot, however handsomely tight it is, Fade-breezes rifling his hair and Fade-winds tickling his ankles beneath his skirts, and that’s when his dwarven rescuer shows up. Add a beard, would you? I like beards.’

‘Damn,’ Varric said. ‘You’re even better at this than I thought.’

*

Anders drifted off somewhere between a first kiss—Varric was good at those; subsequent kisses, not so much—and a _somniari_ chase. The stories Anders was told were experiences he hadn’t lived, same as always, and this time there was no Feynriel to offer him puzzling platitudes before sunrise.

Instead, there was Keran at the door, with a basket of warm rolls and a little pot of jam to spread on them. There were purpling shadows beneath his eyes, but he had the gall to act as chipper and well-rested and pink-cheeked as ever, grinning when Varric stood back to let him in.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t as fancy as yesterday’s breakfast,’ Keran said, arranging the meager spread on the table. Anders’s stomach gave a lonely growl from the couch, betraying his position from his fortress of pillows. ‘We thought maybe the whole affair might have been a bit…rich.’ He glanced Anders’s way, thereby revealing he’d known Anders was there all along. There was no point in attempting to hide beneath his nest of blankets now; the rumors would be swirling by midday, and it would ruin Varric’s fine reputation. ‘…Fenris and Hawke took the last of the bacon with them this morning, anyway.’

Anders stretched, burrowing deeper into the covers. Instead of feeling too-full he felt curiously empty, as though Feynriel had come and hollowed his dreams out in the night.

‘Aw, shit,’ Varric said. He didn’t look Anders’s way, but that didn’t stop Anders from recognizing the shift in temperature or from knowing he was responsible for it. ‘I figured they might head off, but I was _really_ hoping I was wrong this time. And when am I ever willing to compromise my gut instincts like that?’

‘It might not be anything serious.’ Keran tore into a roll as he spoke, but he didn’t eat it. Instead, he tugged at the hard crust and soft insides, wanting something to do with his hands more than he wanted a warm, delicious meal. ‘There’s always talk coming out of Starkhaven, and none of it good. But Hawke thought—with circumstances being what they are—’

‘I _can_ hear you, you know,’ Anders said, deigning to sit up at last. There was a loose feather stuck to the stubble on his cheek and he brushed it aside, running a hand through his hair before continuing. ‘I know you mean me. _I’m_ circumstances. There’s no point in wasting a lot of time pretending otherwise, so you might as well use my real name and get it over with—Anders doesn’t have too many syllables, _and_ it isn’t hard to spell. ’

Time was especially valuable when it came to sensitive matters, like two of their companions running off to the center of chantry strength in Thedas without telling anyone. That was what Varric would have said, and when Anders looked to him for confirmation, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, the set of Varric’s jaw was confirmation enough.

Anders could be smart when he needed to be, smarter than his usual charm allowed because it so often elbowed all other things out of the way, sacrificing intelligence and modesty upon its brazen altar. And Anders knew Hawke, better today than he had the day before, better than he wished to if not better than he could. The man he’d read about and the man he’d kissed were two sides of the same sovereign. With Varric’s words and Anders’s foolish actions, it was easy to cobble together an understanding of the person behind the story, behind the furred pauldrons and the cowl, one who existed outside the dusty pages of a bound manuscript.

Anders deserved to know where Hawke was and what he was doing just as much as anyone in this room, even if the scant experiences he’d built in a few days were insignificant in the face of another man’s lifetime. That man had meant enough once to have a whole statue built in his honor; Anders was just an accident and, in a roundabout way, a prisoner.

‘He’s got you there, Peaches,’ Varric said.

‘Beg pardon?’ Anders asked. ‘ _Peaches_?’

Keran’s cheeks flushed red as the strawberry preserves he’d brought, a sticky streak of it across his thumb where he’d opened the pot too quickly. ‘I really wish you wouldn’t call me that in front of other people, Varric. Or at _all,_ now that I mention it.’

‘You got me.’ Varric held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’ll keep it between me and the quill. And Bianca, of course. I can’t keep secrets from her. One look from that cocking ring and I’m—’

‘Oh, no,’ Anders said, straightening his robes beneath his borrowed blankets. ‘I won’t have you distracting me with talk of Bianca and her _parts._ Hawke’s in Starkhaven, and I want to know why.’

Keran winced, licking the jam from his fingers in a quick swipe. He looked to Varric, who seemed to have taken a sudden, unhelpful interest in rooting through the contents of his pockets. Finding no assistance where he’d sought it—not from friend or stranger—Keran met Anders’s gaze with blue-eyed determination.

 _Peaches_. His cheeks were round and flushed just like them, the barest ghosting of pale fuzz along them neither beard nor bird-down.

Varric was _good_.

‘Right,’ Keran said. ‘Well, we know as much as we can—no more and no less. There’s word that the king—Sebastian Vael—is amassing another army. Hawke believes—from the news, _we_ believe he plans to take another shot at Wildervale, before we can draw more mages to our cause.’ Keran cleared his throat, sweeping a crumb from where it was caught in the edge of his vambrace. ‘Hawke wanted to learn whether there’s any truth behind those rumors. We’re doing all right here, as right as we can, but we’ve never had to withstand a true siege. Hawke says it’s only a matter of time before we have to do just that, and if we don’t hold out, there won’t be another city to take our place—the apostates will go back to being leaderless, scattered, the way they were in the beginning.’

‘Lovely,’ Anders said. ‘I hadn’t gotten to that part in the books yet. What a happy ending.’

‘I like to think it’s more…open-ended than anything else.’ Varric coughed, on the move at last, swiping a roll out of the basket and dusting the white flour off onto the table. He wrinkled his nose, holding back a sleeve, then tucked in. Unlike certain other dwarves Anders knew, he waited until he was finished chewing to continue talking. ‘Anyway, that’s about where I stopped writing. Call me superstitious or call me old-fashioned, or call me whatever you want—I prefer _Ser Tethras_ sometimes, or _lover-dwarf_ if you absolutely have to—but I like a good amount of foreshadowing. Can’t write stuff down if I don’t know what it’s all leading up to. Now that’s just messy.’

‘Writer’s block,’ Anders said. ‘You have _writer’s block._ ’

‘Blondie,’ Varric told him, before he took a second roll, ‘I like you. Always have. But right now? You are _pushing_ it.’

It was Anders’s turn to hold up his hands in defeat, then squirm and wriggle out of his makeshift bed. Breakfast was on the table and watching other people get their fill of the best spots of jam and the bread while it was still warm simply wouldn’t do. Some people—people like Hawke, elves like Fenris—preferred to deny themselves, to walk into the open mouth of danger without enjoying breakfast first. But Anders wasn’t that person no matter what the stories said, and he sat in one of the more comfortable chairs, not too low to the ground to suit Varric’s build.

Anders spread the jam on the bread and a lot of butter, too, and when he ate it, it made him feel warm and happy.

‘Is this magical?’ he asked. ‘It’s the most delicious bread I’ve ever had.’

‘You ask some people, it is,’ Varric replied, gesturing for the pat of butter after Anders was finished with it. ‘Can’t imagine that a mage city would be full of fine craftsmen and even finer bakers, but there you have it. Peaches, are you _sure_ Hawke and Fenris headed off for Starkhaven? They didn’t… I don’t know, decide to take advantage of the nice weather and gather some daisies isntead?’

‘I’d say you aren’t blocked at all, Varric.’ Keran’s cheeks were just a flushed shade pinker than before; despite the set of his mouth, somewhere closer to a frown than it was to a smile, there was a roguish cleverness about him. _Gallows humor_ , Anders called it—one of the Maker’s favorite jokes, that someone became funnier the more dire their situation was, the fewer people they had around ready for laughter. ‘You’re making up some of your best stories right now.’

‘So Hawke and Fenris are off scouting, and we’re stuck back here to do the usual.’ Varric sighed, shaking his head. There were no crumbs caught in his chest hair, no smear of jam amongst the golden tangle of fuzzy glory, an impressive feat considering how much flower Anders had to wipe off his feathers and his lap. ‘Well—not the usual. Just a shade off that. Keep an eye on Anders, _that’s_ not usual. But as for the rest, we bide our time, make sure we take refugees in as quietly as possible, try not to get into too much trouble just by being ourselves, and hope Hawke doesn’t show up again with an army on his heels.’

‘Those were the days,’ Keran agreed. Then, he blinked and cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. No they weren’t. And it’s not something to joke about.’

‘If you don’t write about it or joke about it…’ Varric said. ‘Hey, not everybody can be as even-keeled as I am. But it almost suits you, Peaches. Sometimes I think you’d make an interesting hero yet—or at the very least a main character of some kind.’

‘Not a compliment.’ Anders licked the jam off his fingers one by one. ‘I mean, have you read his books about Hawke?’

Keran colored, more honestly this time. ‘One or two,’ he said, just under his breath.

Varric grinned, all white teeth. ‘Always _so_ nice to work with a fan.’

‘ _Anyway_ ,’ Anders continued, ‘it’s not exactly flattering. Some of those lines, Varric. _Eugh._ And I can only imagine how disappointing it must be to meet the man after reading about him dueling the arishok with one hand tied behind his back.’

‘Actually,’ Varric admitted, ‘there was a whole lot more of the running around in circles part I figured I could cut out. Just for the sake of brevity. Hawke understands. After they carried him away, he was muttering _something_ about killing me if I mentioned all the high-pitched screaming…’

Anders and Keran shared a look of commiseration before Anders miscalculated how sticky the jam was and slurped as loudly as Oghren trying to suck it off his forefinger.

Varric shrugged. ‘I’ve woken up with worse.’

At least it wasn’t as awkward as the previous breakfast had been, just a comfortable group of people left behind while a less-comfortable group went off to be brave and heroic and stupid. The idea of an avenging army descending on Wildervale—clear as the sky was, cool and crisp, sunlight streaming in through the windows, laughter sounding from the distant courtyard, the smell of the bread and the sweetness of the jam—seemed as distant as the events in Varric’s books, bad things that happened to other people. So did Deep Roads and darkspawn and dying Blights, joinings and last stands and childer grubs, all the horrors and atrocities and losses replaced by that gentle day some weeks after battle when the dawn finally brought with it a sense of calm, a sense of future. A sense of hope.

Anders took a deep breath. He smelled fresh, short-stalk grass and yeast and whatever strong scent it was Varric daubed behind his ears after washing.

‘So…what is it that we do while we wait, anyway?’ Anders asked, snagging the last of the rolls. ‘Knit scarves and get cozy?’

‘You’ll see soon enough, Blondie,’ Varric said. ‘But the mages of Wildervale mean business, that’s for sure.’

*

Meaning business in Wildervale translated to working hard, not talking very much, and staring at Anders side-long like he was a _saarebas_ come down from Par Vollen to wander the plains of the Free Marches, desolate and alone.

That last had more to do with the cowl Anders had fashioned for himself than anything else. He’d borrowed the cloak Hawke had left behind in order to hide his face; that way, he could still walk the streets of the free city as freely as he could, at least under the circumstances. Hawke wouldn’t need a cloak in Starkhaven, as close as it was to the Antivan border—or so Varric claimed. But when Anders wound the soft wool around his shoulders, folding it at the neck, tucking even his long nose into the shadows, all he could think of was the damage he’d done to Hawke the night before—and how Hawke had _still_ thought to leave him his cloak.

It was easy to ascribe a certain fondness to his actions, however imaginary. It was just as comforting as sun-smelling wool, far more comforting than privacy in the darkness.

Anders hadn’t imagined the warmth in Hawke’s gaze or the strength of his hands as he’d settled them against Anders’s back—wanting more but not allowing himself to have it. It might have been for someone else initially, but Hawke wasn’t the type to lie to himself.

He was a smart man, a clever one, who understood the difference between the Anders he’d known and the Anders he had now. That was why they’d stopped kissing, why they hadn’t done more than kissing. So it was for the latter he’d left an easy means of disguise—perhaps suggesting Anders get out of the room and stop reading ghost stories about other people.

It was a fair enough suggestion, as Wildervale’s apostates had a massive list of daily chores to go about and no shortage of work for a spirit healer come down with Hawke from the Vimmark Mountains.

‘You’re a _healer?_ ’ asked the captain of the watch, a colorful fellow by the name of Azure Jamos. He’d had the mages running drills all morning, lighting the enormous braziers that lined Wildervale’s east wall. They were filled with oil, ready to boil at a moment’s notice, ready to be poured unceremoniously on any Starkhaven heads that saw fit to siege the mage’s city.

Anders—sweating heavily beneath his cowl, clothes stinking of smoke without a trace of Hawke’s scent left to linger beneath—had finally collapsed to the floor in protest, citing talents that lay elsewhere. His voice echoed from beneath the folds of his cowl but no one seemed to recognize it; Anders wondered how many of these people knew their hero by something more than the bronze cast of his giant face.

He hadn’t known it would cause everyone to stop in their tracks, staring at him like he’d just announced he was a three-headed dragonling and also the _real_ rightful bastard King of Ferelden.

‘Call Ruvena,’ Captain Jamos said, snatching the nearest apprentice by his collar. ‘Tell her we’ve either got a spirit healer or a soon-to-be regretful comedian on our hands.’

‘Can’t it be both?’ Anders asked. But no one could see the cheerfully disarming smile he affected beneath his hood, nor could they hear the faint chuckle that wheezed after it, and Captain Jamos didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor or the muscles necessary for grinning.

It was Alain who came to fetch him, in robes of purple with blue piping, no trace of soot on his skin or meaningful singe-marks on his robes. He was the most reassuring sight Anders had been granted all day—since Varric was giving him the gift of pretending he _wasn’t_ under constant surveillance—and he wasted no time in telling Alain as much on their way back inside the keep.

‘Most with your specialization never make it this far,’ Alain said, ignoring the compliment in favor of leading Anders to the makeshift clinic they’d set up in the western-most wing. ‘Our sentinels have a background in battle magic—entropy and elemental magics, force mages, that sort of thing. It’s rare to see someone with your gift on this side of the Waking Sea.’

‘This…Anders I’ve heard so much about—he was a spirit healer, wasn’t he?’ Anders asked, poking at the sore spot the same way he counseled his patients never to pick their scabs. He could picture it even now, clean fingernails digging in beneath newly-formed tissue, tearing the hard crust away and damaging the tender flesh beneath.

‘Ah.’ Alain’s eyes flicked down the row of beds to where a bearded mage was instructing his fledgling apprentice in the proper application of a poultice. _Poultices_ in a _mage city_. It was almost enough to bring a tear to Anders’s eye—and not because of the beauty of freedom, the pleasure of carrying a staff in open air, the soft bootfalls that replaced clanking steps as templars patrolled and policed the order. ‘…Yes. He was. We have a few who come to help out every now and then, but it isn’t…well. It just isn’t the same.’

Anders laid a hand on his shoulder, confidence and a hidden face getting the better of him at last. There were a few occupied beds, a young ginger-haired woman with her arm in a splint, and a pair of twins who seemed to share the same chest-rattling cough; further down was an elf who’d broken his fingers repairing the wall and what looked like an expecting mother about to give birth before she managed to sit down.

Perhaps for the first time since his untimely arrival in this forsaken future of a place—by turns pretty and petrifying—Anders knew exactly what he had to do.

‘Don’t worry—I always do my best healing in this cloak,’ Anders said, wishing he could twitch the folds of his hood back to get a better look at what lay before him. But he’d done his work in poorer conditions than this, despite the blinding mists of the Blackmarsh and the darkness of the Deep Roads, healing dashing rogues and fearless dwarven soldiers while fending off his own fair share of darkspawn.

Body braced, he stepped forward, between the rows of clean little cots, toward the patients who’d never know his name or his face. His hands were what mattered, what his hands could do, and no one flinched away from him when magic sparked at his fingertips, though some of them were mages while the others weren’t.

*

Anders returned to Hawke’s room late in the evening to find Keran guarding it. He was too tired to put much thought into wondering whether it was for Hawke’s sake—there were barely any personal touches to the place, nothing to protect beyond a few chairs, a well-made bed, and a nice set of curtains—or for Anders’s, to make sure he didn’t get into any trouble. Not before Feynriel could figure him out; not while Hawke was still away.

When Anders stepped in and Keran looked up, he knew it was for his sake—and also that someone had been keeping an eye on him all day.

He’d been too busy with sprained muscles and rattling chests and a woman in labor trying to tear his fingers off one by one to notice it at the time. The distraction of having something to do, something he was good at, was a fine one, the best there was, and now—drained of mana, drained of energy, satisfied with the beauty of life and all its sticky, bloody beginnings—he couldn’t muster the energy to be offended by it.

‘Supper?’ Keran offered. ‘Varric always gets the best delivered to him somehow. Seniority and his silver tongue, he calls it, but I think the only way to explain it is that he’s downright tricky.’

Anders’s appetite wasn’t what it used to be—it was more than it used to be, more than was natural, a hunger that crept in and set camp and never left, an uninvited guest who told bad jokes and made himself at home despite how little he was welcome. Anders wiped the cold sweat off the bridge of his nose, pulling his hood up again for the journey back through the halls. He’d been so careful at the cost of being comfortable—and at the cost of his patients’ comfort. There was no need to ruin his hard work now, before he had a chance to be complimented on it.

‘You know the way to a warden’s heart, Keran,’ Anders said.

‘Not many of the people I know waste their time thinking about such petty things,’ Keran admitted. ‘Sometimes I wonder if Hawke and Fenris ever eat. They drink now and then, but surely that isn’t enough.’

‘Must be difficult for you,’ Anders said. ‘A nice Free-Marcher like yourself, with simple tastes and simple needs…’

‘Hawke saved my life more than once.’ Keran held the door open for Anders, polite as could be, the sort of pleasant, sweet lad a person could get used to, coupled with a face that never failed to surprise with its constant perfection. ‘Even if I’m not here because I owe him anything—I’m here because he taught me how to decide what I owe myself.’

‘ _Deep_ ,’ Anders said. ‘Deep as the deep roads, even.’

He was relaxed enough—by hard work, by the praise of his fellow mages, by the new mother’s thanks and the unhindered laughter of two happy children—to let his guard down. He let the walls of Wildervale be that guard for him, trotting through the hall like a good little mage with the promise of one of Varric’s special suppers calling for him more sweetly than any darkspawn dream.

But Keran hadn’t implied Varric wouldn’t be alone.

Anders stopped short in the doorway, not protected for an instant by Hawke’s heavy cloak and cape when he realized Feynriel was there too. Sitting by the fire, arms crossed over his chest, the uneven light made his soft hair and softer robes seem like visions from the Fade, more like the essence of a person than a real man. He looked like the shadow Anders had met—not by accident, but not because Anders had asked for it, either.

‘Is this an ambush?’ Anders asked, glancing at Keran, who glanced quickly away.

‘In Wildervale? The finest free-mage outpost in Thedas?’ Varric snorted, gesturing for Anders to take off his stupid cowl and maybe take a seat. Anders hesitated, then unhooded himself, while Feynriel smiled—another expression of sympathy, of understanding, of apology but not nearly enough of it. What Feynriel knew wasn’t normal; it was probably more than Anders knew of himself, all the dusty corners that were quiet these days, and easy to ignore when the body was busy with battle. ‘Just have a seat, Blondie. Traveling with Hawke, being _around_ Hawke—you have to prepare for surprises.’

‘I was just stopping by,’ Feynriel said. ‘I wanted to see how everyone was, while I was still _here_ to see for myself.’

‘You could always have popped in and asked me while I was sleeping,’ Anders told him. ‘Maybe we could have fought a few darkspawn in there together. As long as you’re rooting around, you might as well make yourself useful.’

‘Blondie,’ Varric warned.

‘And Keran looks so innocent, too,’ Anders continued, keeping an eye on Feynriel and a smile on his face as he crossed the room. ‘I assume that’s part of the ruse? To entice innocent healers into sticky situations. Fine: interrogate me. At least let me have some supper while we’re at it.’

Varric cleared his throat, something like amusement deepening the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. ‘To be honest, that’s all a meal is with people like us, anyway. Interrogation with snacks. We like to make things pleasant. We also like to get to the bottom of things whenever we can, because we’re nosy like that.’

‘It isn’t _really_ an ambush,’ Keran said.

‘Not anymore than dinner with Varric usually is,’ Feynriel agreed.

They shared a look and Anders—for all he’d seen, for all he’d read, for all he’d slept in a tangle of Varric’s blankets and kissed Hawke, shared pillows and cloaks and drinks and bacon—remembered he was the odd man out. No matter how many people he healed, no matter how useful he was, no matter how many pages he scoured, there were still so many memories that weren’t his, so many in-jokes he didn’t understand, lives lived and experiences shaped.

Anders dropped into a chair and sighed.

At least there was fresh bread. That was something he could share just as easily as reaching out and snatching it up with hungry fingers.

‘I helped today,’ he announced, to no one but the bread in his hands. ‘Delivered a child _and_ nearly singed my fingers off preparing the keep’s defenses. You’d think that sort of work might earn a man some trust, if not the right to eat his dinner in peace.’

‘It’s not that we don’t trust you,’ Keran said. ‘You wouldn’t be here at all if we didn’t. Fenris, at least, would have—’

Feynriel cleared his throat, coughing into his hand in a way that to Anders—being an expert in coughs—seemed more like a laugh than a true affliction.

‘Very comforting, Peaches,’ Varric said.

*


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders thinks he knows what happened and the others decide to send him back where he came from. For Hawke's sake, of course.

Anders was only happy enough to use the extra time to eat as they chattered amongst themselves, sorting out who’d be good templar and bad templar when they tried the standard on him, with a _somniari_ thrown in for good measure, because that was how Anders’s life worked. The only role that was always fixed unchanging was Anders’s—stuck as the naughty apostate for the rest of his days. Even here, even as a hero, there was the pervading air of punishment melted into the bronze and chilly in the air. Anders leaned not uncomfortably against the table, refusing to sit down just yet but not so stubborn that he’d put his comfort aside just to prove a point.

Besides the bread, there was a roast bird of undetermined origin with dark, crackly skin, a plate of limply steamed vegetables, and a platter piled high with lumpy potato mash. Since no one else seemed to be taking part of the spread before it got cold and piecey, Anders thought there was little point in holding back for dignity’s sake.

Despite certain displays of prosperity, Wildervale didn’t seem like the sort of place that could afford to waste food because its inhabitants were peculiar enough to prefer talking to eating at dinnertime. Even at Vigil’s Keep the usual suspects fell silent when supper was served—Sigrun as quiet as the tomb, or as quiet as Nathaniel Howe.

‘If it’s honesty you care for, then I suppose I might as well admit we’re _mostly_ here for Hawke’s sake,’ Feynriel said.

Anders, halfway through a drumstick, his fingers greasy where they gripped the bone, found he didn’t much care for the way Feynriel said Hawke’s name. There was a gentleness to his tone that spoke of great caring, the same gentleness one exhibited when wrapping a treasured possession in cotton to lay it in a heartwood box.

The foolishness of his reaction wasn’t lost on him—it rarely was—but he could no more control his feelings than anyone else. Knowing something was stupid—knowing Hawke wasn’t _his_ to feel jealous over—did nothing to ease his stirring resentment, bubbling like the surface of Captain Jamos’s braziers and filled to the brim with red-hot oil.

‘If that’s true, then you’re in the wrong place,’ Anders said, setting down his dinner. He wiped his fingers on a faded gingham napkin, licking a stripe of grease from the crevice between nail and skin on his thumb. ‘He’s miles north of here by now—unless I’m very much mistaken. Does he lie to you about his whereabouts often? Maybe he just wants some time to himself—or with the denizens of the local free mage brothel, perhaps? You _do_ have one of those?’

‘He _is_ far from here.’ Feynriel folded his hands into his long sleeves, fingers graceful and deceptively subtle.

‘And that’s precisely the reason we’ve waited until now to have our little meeting of the minds,’ Varric added. ‘Now, don’t go getting the wrong idea, thinking we’re devious enough to plan all this behind Hawke’s back. It just so happens that the three of us had some spare time, which is rare enough, and we decided to make use of it. We got to talking.’ Varric leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands as though this was another of his stories— _Three Innocent Blonds_ , perhaps, or _A Tale of Well-Meaning Individuals_. ‘See, all of us _owe_ Hawke in some way or another. Keran here owes him his life, Feynriel owes him his freedom, and me? Well, let’s just say that a storyteller’s nothing without a solid main character. That man gave me material for life, so I figure if there’s anything I can do to return the favor… You get the picture, Blondie.’

‘Not in the slightest,’ Anders said. ‘Perhaps you’re better off when you stick to writing, Varric. I’m afraid you aren’t much of an artist.’

‘Feynriel wants to see if we can understand how you got here,’ Keran said, also deceptive. As straightforward as he was when all the half-feints and shadowy turns in the conversation became too much for him, Anders still wrinkled his nose and refused to trust its authenticity. ‘And if…’

‘And if you’re likely to disappear—to return the same way,’ Feynriel concluded, unflinching.

Anders felt something chill creep over his skin, delicate as morning dew on the blades of grass the cart’s wheels had trampled some days ago while crossing the plains from the mountains. There’d been so much to think about: whether or not he’d been kidnapped and who his kidnappers were; Hawke’s handsome brow and his collection of bad joints; the bronze statue of Anders, a life he had yet to live and a war he’d helped to begin, the history of another man rather than his own; Varric’s loneliness, Varric’s crossbow, Varric’s chest-hair, and Keran’s wicked streak.

It was obvious Anders didn’t belong here, but it hadn’t occurred to him yet to think about how he might get back.

The idea of leaving Hawke behind with an empty bed and a cloak that smelled of Captain Jamos’s defense drills was almost tragic—to say nothing of leaving Varric alone with Bianca and a borrowed pillow, the two of them nestled together seeking warmth and comfort. And Anders had no idea how he’d describe the whole thing to the others, whether or not they’d listen to him or assume he’d gotten into Oghren’s collection again, stealing liberally from his bottle of Golden Scythe 4:90 Black.

They’d believe broodmothers and talking darkspawn, golems aflame and spirits outside of the Fade fighting by their sides. They’d believe dragons of bone and accept the presence of the Architect, that bad things often happened to good people, that Velanna could be trusted not to kill someone with a bush one day. But they wouldn’t believe one of Anders’s stories. He’d get a pat on the back from the Warden Commander followed by one of Nathaniel’s soft tutting noises, neither pleased nor displeased, simply bothered. ‘Tell me more about it,’ Sigrun would say. ‘Was he really as handsome as you said, or is that just nostalgia talking? What happened next? I’m just _dying_ to find out—and I mean that literally!’ And Anders could tell her, without the grace or felicity of Varric’s convictions and comedic timing, while the one person who did let him prattle on still didn’t believe for a second he’d lived what he told her.

‘I just thought the whole thing was a dream, to be honest with you,’ Anders said lightly. ‘Some side effect of all the wardening. Or maybe _you’re_ the demons and _I’m_ in _your_ thrall. …Though, in all fairness, this is the worst demonic possession I’ve ever heard of. The food’s good, but the company’s a bit iffy. I’d rather have a taproom and some bar-wenches, _maybe_ a handsome mercenary in tight leathers, that sort of thing.’

He waited. The room didn’t flicker and change to meet his specifications, not beyond the stretches of firelight across Varric’s prized Orzammar rug. He supposed he was being an ass about the whole thing and he supposed he didn’t care. He supposed everyone was thinking of Hawke’s troubles and Hawke’s feelings and Hawke’s comfort.

Hawke was where he belonged, at least, where he’d chosen to be—even if that was in the foothills surrounding Starkhaven to the east, he’d gone there of his own accord, instead of waking up one morning in the back of someone’s renegade cart, chilly and smelling of ox-dung.

‘All right,’ Anders muttered. ‘What do you want, oh fair demons mine? Shall I recount the precious hours I spent in the place where I—presumably—belong? Because it isn’t pretty.’

‘I don’t _do_ pretty. Those aren’t my stories, and they never will be.’ Varric leaned forward across the table, finally grabbing himself a plate. Keran tucked in as well, offering Feynriel the chance to serve himself first, but there was something elvhen about him—which meant he chose to pick at vegetables and sip at water. Elves were always doing that, making everyone else feel like hurlocks in comparison, great slathering beasts slave only to their physical needs and blighted hunger.

Anders tore into more poultry in response. Just like making himself a target in Starkhaven territory was Hawke’s choice, indulging in whatever he could was Anders’s.

‘Well,’ he began, remembering to swallow first so as not to be a complete Oghren, ‘it all starts with the broodmothers. Have any of _you_ met a broodmother?’

‘No,’ Feynriel admitted. ‘But I have seen them in dreaming.’

‘No,’ Varric added. ‘But I _have_ seen Aveline when she’s pissed.’

‘No,’ Keran said. ‘But I _have_ undergone training with Knight-Commander Meredith.’

‘You’re all so funny.’ Anders dabbed at his face with the napkin he’d commandeered. ‘Has anyone ever told you that?’

‘More or less,’ Varric said.

‘You _think_ you understand broodmothers,’ Anders continued. ‘It’s all _ha, ha, I’ve seen great evil in my lifetime, I’m sure I can handle it_ , but then you’re in a dark, dank cave with the smells all around you, dodging slimy tentacles, realizing even the _ghosts_ don’t want to be trapped in the same cavern with those things.’

‘I dunno.’ Varric took a swig of something that looked sweet, patting his chest daintily. ‘Sounds like Aveline when she’s pissed to me.’

‘Who’s telling this story, Varric?’ Anders asked.

Varric met him eye to eye. ‘You know, I ask myself that question _all_ the time.’

‘Go ahead, Anders,’ Feynriel said, in a tone of voice most reserved for recalcitrant children and fussy old people. Anders used it when he was feeling patient—patient with his patients—and he picked a bit of crackling skin out of his teeth, taking his time for no reason other than to be ridiculous.

Sometimes being ridiculous was all he had.

‘We killed a _lot_ of broodmothers in our time,’ Anders said at last, still poking whatever was caught in his tooth with his tongue. ‘But we were busy wardens, and there were other darkspawn to hunt, dragons to fight, epic sieges to live through. There wasn’t exactly time to look into things beyond taking care of them as best we could, protecting the people and saving our skins and _not_ dying in the Deep Roads. You’ve probably heard all about the siege of Amaranthine and Vigil’s Keep already so I won’t bore you with the details, people pissing themselves and dying every-which-way. The rest of it’s stuffed to the brim with warden secrets and I’m already on probation for discussing the joining with a pretty recruit, so I won’t get into that, either.’

Varric whistled. ‘This is some story.’

‘No more confusing than yours usually are,’ Keran murmured.

‘Did you hear that?’ Varric asked. ‘He just insulted us both. _At the same time._ ’

‘Keran’s innocent face hides dark evils,’ Anders agreed. ‘Dark evils like those that lurk below the stone in the Deep Roads at Kal’Hirol. …Which is where I was before I was here. Not exactly enjoying my time there, either, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

‘So…maybe a broodmother knocked you over the head and you’re dreaming us up right now.’ Varric paused to consider it, rubbing his jaw with his thumb. ‘Which would make you the author, wouldn’t it? I don’t know how I feel about that.’

Varric, Anders was beginning to realize, was even more distracting than the other dwarves, the ones who burped and blatted and barreled over, falling off the bench at the Crown and Lion.

‘Except all the broodmothers were dead,’ Anders explained. ‘We were just moving tentacles around and making sure there weren’t any more arcane horrors lurking in the depths. You never can tell when it comes to the Deep Roads, and we wardens just _love_ wasting our time down there.’

‘There isn’t anything particularly suspect or powerful about broodmothers,’ Feynriel said, in a voice that seemed too calm, too subtle, for a proper interruption. He glanced around the room when everyone looked his way, short nails digging into the fine weave of his robes over one knee, as though he hadn’t planned for a sudden shift in attention. Even _somniari_ could be taken by surprise, a neat little detail of revenge that Anders enjoyed the same as any other. ‘Not as far as _I_ know. I’m not an expert on the subject; it wasn’t my field of study. But no darkspawn—not even a talking one—would have the power to transport a man to his own future.’

‘Oh, you have the talking kind here too?’ Anders asked. Those memories flashed and fluttered in back of his mind: the disciples they’d defeated, rotting teeth beneath sunken skin, their brows waxen and gray in the torchlight, bloody strips over raw bone. The Architect had been another matter, but his words were as insubstantial as his frame, each wraith-like gesture of slim arms and long fingers. And even that creeping, crawling danger paled in comparison to their final foe: the Mother herself, more tentacles than a breeding pit and ink-black stains on her throat and hands, dripping like tears beneath her eyes. ‘That’s just _lovely_. The future gets better and better every day.’

Feynriel shook his head, making a quick, sweeping gesture with his hand. Anders felt the dismissal as clearly as if he’d spoken it—in spite of the fact that they’d looked to him to explain things in the first place.

Just because he couldn’t didn’t mean he wasn’t the one who knew himself better than anyone else, including a dwarf who’d spent years studying him for publication.

‘I can’t imagine even the most powerful darkspawn would have that ability.’ Feynriel tucked a pale strand of hair back from his face, blond as summer cornsilk, revealing the faintest of points on the outer shell of his ear. ‘In Tevinter, we—my _master_ makes a habit of studying objects of great mystical power, their properties and traits. It’s something to talk about at dinner parties, mostly, but I think it’s more than that. There are no antiques in Tevinter that are collected _solely_ for their beauty. Anything old…anything of _value_ has the mark of time upon it, the mark of history. Magic wrought through memory, through meaning and possession. That’s what seems to be at work here, if anything.’

Anders felt the stirring of an old, stubborn interest, like tea leaves disturbed at the bottom of a forgotten cup. He was long past the follies of his youth when he yearned for his very own Imperium villa, the latest silks from Perivantium delivered to his door and an assortment of fresh figs with his breakfast. The whole _slavery_ thing was a bit of a downer, and while he had no personal quarrel with anyone who chose to spend their life as a _blood mage_ —better not to quarrel personally with blood mages—the idea of being forced to duel for his life in the streets gave him the willies all up and down his back.

No, his life was for the better now, tainted blood and tentacles and all. There were always the whispers of self-doubt, wondering _what if_ at the back of his mind, but their voices were overshadowed by the darkspawn now. Anders chose to ignore them both to gossip with Oghren or trade silly jokes with Sigrun.

As tempting as it was to ask if Feynriel was in need of his very own spirit healer who would _owe him a favor_ in Tevinter, now didn’t seem the right time to bring it up.

‘So you’re saying it wasn’t the broodmothers,’ Anders said instead.

‘I’m saying there _might_ be something you aren’t telling us,’ Feynriel replied, gentle as a flutter of sparrow’s wings, but with the clutch of a raptor’s talons beneath.

Just another reason Anders could never go to Tevinter. Anders liked his pretty things to remain pretty; the only animal he accepted with hidden claws was Ser Pounce-a-lot, and he had far too sweet a disposition to be a magister’s mousing kitty.

Anders’s mouth tightened, caught between frowning and pursing his lips. Everyone was staring at him again—his very own collection of interrogators, in varying shades of blond—as though all of this was still his fault, something he’d chosen, something he’d done on purpose or happily accepted as lucky accident. It wasn’t as though he’d woken one morning and decided life wasn’t complicated enough, that what he _really_ wanted was to hear he’d been a martyr in another life—just like Andraste, only with less popularity where the chantry was concerned, and no accessories with his face carved into them.

He hoped.

‘Oh, of _course,_ ’ Anders said, his appetite forgotten. ‘I can’t hide anything from you lot, can I? Very clever, Feynriel—you’ve uncovered my dastardly designs. When I report back to my demonic master, I’ll be certain to tell him _you’re_ the most dangerous one.’

‘Blondie,’ Varric said.

Anders was beginning to be sick of the nickname.

‘No no,’ Anders said. ‘Please, Varric. Allow me to admit my guilt. It’s clear you’re all eager to lay the blame on _someone._ Why not the new fellow, who just so happens to be an old fellow? In fact, I’d probably do the same thing.’ He yawned, covering his mouth with the back of a freckled hand. ‘Feynriel deserves a confession, so here it is: _after_ the long hours of cleaning up tentacles and wobbling flesh, I snuck out of the pit to take a nap in some uninterrupted corner of Kal’Hirol. Quiet enough down there, except for the ghosts. My back was hurting and I wasn’t in the mood— _and_ I’m a shirker.’

‘So we’re back to the dream theory again.’ Varric shook his head. ‘I tell you, _that_ gives me the shivers more than a winter in _Cumberland_.’

‘There were ghosts?’ Keran shifted forward as though he thought Anders was telling a campfire story, complete with shadow-puppets cast on the far wall and spooky voices. Maybe that would have made the story better, but Anders didn’t have the energy for it anymore.

‘Dwarven ghosts,’ he said. ‘And if you think they’re any quieter when they’re dead, then you’d better think again. I went to lie down, they were rude enough to keep distracting me, I was rude enough to poke around instead; I cut my finger on a spooky mirror and woke up in an ox-cart, neat as you please. So as you can see, Feynriel, you _are_ right about me. Untrustworthy to the core. Napping my way through the Ferelden countryside and into the Free Marches and invading futures wherever I go.’

‘Oh,’ Feynriel said.

Anders had a few moments to feel proud of himself for outwitting a magister—or an almost-magister, one of his apprentices, a powerful dream-walker and hopefully not a blood mage with whom Anders was about to make a personal quarrel.

Then, he listened to what he’d said, piecing together the round _O_ of Feynriel’s mouth and the arch of his pale brow, the rub of Varric’s thumb along his stubbly jaw, Keran looking about as thrilled as he was disturbed—like any young lad entranced by a campfire ghost-story, caught up in the perfect denouement when all the pieces clicked and the truth behind the ghost was revealed.

‘Cut my finger on a spooky mirror,’ Anders repeated.

‘Cut your finger on a spooky mirror,’ Varric agreed.

‘It _might_ have been an Eluvian, then.’ Feynriel’s eyes were clouded, his gaze on some other-place, the same look he probably wore when he was snooping around in people’s thoughts and hearts and dreams. Anders wiggled in his chair, folding and unfolding his napkin, and Varric patted his stomach, somewhere above his belt and below his chest-hair. It was a sign of how much everyone in the room respected Feynriel—they didn’t try to interrupt him while he was thinking, telling a story to no one other than himself, untangling all the threads before he continued speaking. ‘…Or something like it. A dwarven prototype—an ancient relic. But an Eluvian _would_ have that sort of power. Of _course._ ’

‘Of course,’ Anders said.

‘You know,’ Varric added, ‘Merrill was working on one of those things, wasn’t she? Not that anybody appreciated her efforts, and there was kind of a demon problem in the end—when _isn’t_ there kind of a demon problem in the end, I ask you that?—but all things considered…’

‘We might be able to get our hands on one.’ Keran blinked, clearing his throat when he realized it was more than just a good story but something they were living, too. ‘It’s not as though I could build one. I’ve done some handcraft, but I’m limited to chairs and tea-tables, not objects of mystical elvhen power.’

‘Yeah,’ Varric said. ‘You leave that up to Feynriel. Did anyone ever tell you the two of you make a pretty good duo?’

Keran’s cheeks flushed pinker than the peaches Varric kept comparing him to and Feynriel’s nose, just the tip, also seemed redder than usual. Anders recognized the tactic, something serious followed by something foolish, jokes peppered through the meat of a conversation to distract everyone from how ridiculous life could be—how ridiculously unhappy, and how much of a right everyone had to panic.

Anders wasn’t panicking—there was a warm fire in the hearth, a good meal on the table; he wasn’t trapped in the dark and the deep with no open doors, no means of escape, like in the nightmares he had of lights winking out one by one as the voices grew louder. That was another fear for another time, and this one had no precedent, no example, nothing more than a hiccup of a laugh that Anders hid behind his greasy napkin.

After that, he was fine.

‘Guess we’ll see if we can get in touch with Merrill.’ Varric tossed his own napkin onto his empty plate, folded neatly without a stain in sight. ‘Who knows—she might even bring one of those mirrors back with her when she shows up.’

‘Just hopefully not the demon problem along with it,’ Anders said.

Varric shrugged. ‘Wildervale’s seen worse in its time. So’s every man here. Might be good to deal with a few demons for a change, instead of people who think they’re better than all that.’

‘How about we deal with neither?’ Anders asked.

‘If that was an option,’ Varric said, ‘who _wouldn’t_ take it? You and I both know the choices are always harder than that; otherwise they wouldn’t _be_ choices.’

‘I suppose this means I’ll be staying a while longer.’ Feynriel fussed with his hair again, maybe nothing more than an excuse to rub his finger over the shell of his half-elvhen ear. The action drew attention to it and to who he was, with the same stubborn insistence as anyone drew attention to the things they were most self-conscious about—the things they were insistent about refusing to change. ‘It’s interesting research. And it _will_ make for quite the discussion at the winter solstice parties later in the season.’

‘Glad to see I’m just a collection of stories, these days,’ Anders muttered, wearing at a worn bit of fabric in his knee. It wasn’t a hole yet but it was thin and pale, probably scuffed from all the times he bent to check on a patient, dropping down to one knee beside the Warden Commander or any of his other injured brothers-in-arms. He wondered if they’d miss him, then knew they would—but soon enough they wouldn’t.

Anders would always be Anders, running from one place to the next, never staying anywhere for long enough to settle down.

In fact, this was his greatest escape yet. Out of the templar frying pan, into the Exalted March fire. At least it wouldn’t be the templars who caught him next—because it he’d already been caught, this time by a group of people searching for ways to be rid of him, who wouldn’t hold on to him the same way they clung to a memory or an old pillow.

‘Now, Blondie,’ Varric said, ‘don’t be sore about it. That’s all anyone is, in the end.’

‘Comforting,’ Anders told him.

‘I try to live up to Peaches,’ Varric replied.

*

The others left, and Anders left with them, each to his own proper place. Hawke wasn’t around—which meant there was no need to give him space, no reason _not_ to make use of his bed in favor of Varric’s couch.

‘You sure do know how to get up to trouble,’ Varric told him, which must have been his fond way of saying goodnight. ‘I’ll give you that.’

Anders could hear the footfalls outside Hawke’s door from a guard pacing the length of the hall—to keep an eye on him as much as to protect the rest of the keep. It was like that everywhere in Vigil’s Keep and Wildervale, everywhere between and everywhere beyond.

Freedom was a relative term. But it was the first time Anders was under observation because of _who_ he was, not what.

He supposed the distinction was an important one to make.

Then, he crawled into bed, shucked off his boots, unbuckled his pauldrons, and went to sleep. No darkspawn haunted him, nor any half-elvhen Tevinter somniari. All he met with were a few tangled memories coupled with lingering heat, gray fur and scoured greaves and the shadows on Hawke’s face.

In the morning, breakfast was delivered, and Anders was in his cowl before Alain knocked on the door.

‘My escort,’ Anders said. ‘Or should I say my chaperone?’

‘You impressed us the other day in the clinic,’ Alain replied. ‘We could use more help—if you’re up to it.’

‘Unlike the vast majority of grizzled warriors and callow youths who make up Wildervale’s defenses, _I_ am always up to it—whatever _it_ may be,’ Anders announced. He almost threw in a comment about Grey Warden stamina, too, but bit his tongue and swallowed it at the last second.

Enough mention had been made in Varric’s books about the former Anders being both a warden and a healer that it seemed in poor taste to draw the comparison: his face hidden, his appearance a mystery, all the mages of Wildervale so clever and the memory of their martyr hero still so near.

Alain laughed—a nervous sound, the kind that meant he didn’t know whether Anders was joking or not, but it seemed prudent to err on the side of being polite, just in case his suffering was still too near.

It wasn’t a companionable laugh but Anders didn’t have to invest all his energies in liking people here, much less getting people to like him. Not when he already had one foot out the door—out the mirror—Feynriel and Keran working on the means of his exit while Varric wrote to the elusive Merrill, to see whether she’d managed to hang onto something that had been so important to her once.

Yet another cause; yet another sacrifice.

It was half gossip and half snooping to know all the most intimate details about a person without ever having met them, without ever having seen their face. Anders felt as much of a thief as Feynriel creeping in to rifle through a stranger’s hopes and dreams.

The magic he’d used was nothing more elaborate than reading an old dwarf’s stories, but it was slim reassurance and it didn’t do much to ease his raw nerves.

Something felt off that morning, but when Anders tried to pin it down it eluded his grasp, like a shade slithering into the dirt. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his breakfast had come in with Alain and not alongside Keran’s smiling face—fresh as the sun itself and almost as welcome a sight first thing, when Anders had only just rolled out of bed all tousled and sleepy. Perhaps it had something to do with the lack of strawberry preserves or the hustle from his room to the infirmary, or the way Anders couldn’t get the cloak to sit right on his shoulders, not as it had the day before.

No matter which way he tugged it, the weight of the fabric felt uneven and the hood too close around his head.

In the clinic at last, he was able to forget his own hot breath trapped against his face, bouncing back the scent of toast and cold tea. The new mother insisted he hold her squalling infant, red as a ruddy radish, while she stole some shut-eye. Meanwhile, the elf whose fingers he’d mended had a gift for him: a wooden carving in the shape of a hand, with the healer’s cross whittled into the palm.

‘Been a long time since we had a spirit healer in these parts,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘Anders wasn’t around long enough to see us come to prosperity—not this way.’

Anders was happy to take the carving and quell his shivers, happy to have something to curl his fingers around just to prove he was still real. It was like a handshake, someone reaching out to introduce himself, but these fingers were curved instead of flat, welcoming instead of warding off unseen danger.

Anders thought of the little cat Hawke had made on their first night together—the inexperienced slope of its sleeping back, the uneven notches cut into its body for stripes. He was going to have to start a collection at this rate, and he couldn’t imagine Hawke would be bothered to see someone else’s trinket beside his, not the same way he was bothered by seeing Anders alongside the old statue.

But such ideas were indulgent and more selfish than even Anders could manage for too long. The clinic had new patients and not all of them could wait around for him to nurse idle thoughts—which generally a man didn’t want to heal and would rather pick at like a sore or a large scab. But Alain had been right: there was always need for a healer anywhere, even in Wildervale.

Anders tended to general burns and scrapes, a broken nose from a staff swung too eagerly and a broken ankle on an apprentice who’d bet three sovereigns he could jump from the southern watchtower and land safe in a pile of hay below. The senior enchanter who’d been instructing his protégé in the use of poultices lurked in his shadow for an hour or so before finally asking if Anders would consider giving a brief lecture—or, even better, a hands-on lesson later in the week regarding basic healing spells.

‘You want _me_ to be a _teacher_?’ Anders asked.

The enchanter shrugged. He’d never had the privilege of meeting Karl Thekla, poor man; he couldn’t imagine what was wrong with his suggestion. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. And _mages…_ ’

‘Mages take what they can get,’ Anders said.

It wasn’t a flattering analogy, but it was one they both understood.

‘It won’t always be this way,’ the enchanter said. ‘It’s changed already. We haven’t the resources, maybe, but we _do_ have the means.’

‘You can’t teach what’s natural.’ Anders had the baby in his arms again, so small and delicate and fragile; the softest things disturbed him, tiny children more so, because they were so many accidents waiting to happen, not all wounds made to be healed. Also, it was crying and making something close to an Oghren smell, bubbles of drool on its lips, the soft split of its hardening skull too vulnerable beneath pale skin veined with faint blue. ‘At least, _I_ can’t do it. You’d get frustrated, I’d get frustrated—will _someone_ take this baby away from me?’

‘He probably wants to see your face, that’s all,’ the enchanter said. He took the babe from Anders and Anders was more than happy to get rid of it, only after that his arms felt empty and his chest cold.

‘I need a moment,’ Anders said.

They’d think it was because of his experiences, memories of what happened just before Hawke took him in that made him panic. No one stared when he rushed from the room, the walls closing in the way they did in the dark; sometimes, he woke in his room at Vigil’s Keep without remembering where he was and that was awful, more awful than he could explain or more awful than a person should have to feel. Even worse was when he woke in the middle of camp, in an abandoned corner of the Deep Roads, the cavern ceiling too low over his pallet.

Walls weren’t built to move and for the most part they didn’t; they only reminded you were there and suddenly the air was tight and heavy, a fresh breeze all that stood between recovery and outright panic.

Anders wouldn’t lose any sleep over arcane horrors or over being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but expectations were a louder burden than any fear, made worse because one had to meet them alone or not at all.

The ramparts of the keep were chill, the winds brisk, blown down from distant mountains and bringing dark clouds with them across the sky. For the time being, Anders smelled sunlight on grass and limestone, oil in braziers and polish from a mage-shop down below, leaning his arms against pock-worn rock as he surveyed the courtyard.

A few young mages were practicing barriers, bringing them up and taking them down, arcane shields only half-opaque and their slight bodies visible beneath each Fade-tinted sphere. They did it over and over, sometimes better than others and sometimes worse, the same way it was done in the library in the circle.

Anders leaned his chin on his palm just as he had during his group lessons. The ones in private were different—and he supposed he hadn’t taken advantage of them as much as he should have, Karl’s kind voice patient as Anders tested that patience. Karl would have made a good addition to the courtyard scene: older now, but well suited to the task of herding children, who were as difficult as cats and often less adorable. They did as they pleased but they needed someone to look up to, someone they might not understand but someone they could trust, with broad shoulders and a twitch of his lips when he sighed.

But Karl was dead—Varric’s story said so—and as much as Anders wanted to be able to think of it as nothing more real than words on a page, sunlight shimmered bright and hard off the arcane shields below. They protected what was inside; they everything else out.

There was only so long a man could live his life that way—as a collection of stories, punchlines for every joke.

Anders scrubbed at his eyes until they stung, the itch behind them more frustrating than an incomplete sneeze. His eyelids hurt when he was finished but going too far meant feeling _something_ , in any case, and so Anders was jealous as always, only it wasn’t just for himself this time.

‘Something the matter, Blondie?’ Varric asked from behind him.

The hairs on the back of Anders’s neck prickled, his stiff healing fingers twitching against the roughened block of limestone. ‘I _hate_ dwarven rogues.’

‘Hate’s pretty close to love sometimes,’ Varric said. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment and try not to be too moved by your wind-swept confession.’

‘It’s just the principle of the matter.’ Anders bit the corner of his lip, watching the lights shimmer and go out, shimmer and go out, with only the sky and Anders to watch them—and no templar armor glittering from across the way. ‘It’s like a mage who can wield a big sword or a warrior who can pick locks.’

‘I try not to confuse my readers, too,’ Varric agreed. ‘Everything in its proper place. But you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘What _isn’t_ the matter, Varric?’ Anders asked, a question for a question, a shield for a spell—a heal for a hurt, just like Karl had taught him. Those lessons were supposed to mean something that lasted, something like a legacy, only Anders hoped there were other people who squandered it less, who appreciated it more in its time. ‘No, it’s not that. There was a baby and it was crying and that always makes me cross. You can’t reason with them—can’t figure out what it is they want, whether they’re hungry or sleepy or in some real pain. It’s all _need, need, need_ , and no way to answer it, and if I wanted one I’d make one—but I don’t, so I haven’t.’

‘All this over one fussy kid?’ Varric looked at Anders and Anders looked at Varric, and it was obvious he knew. If not everything, then most things: what had built—without the same foundations as the keep walls or the walls around the city, nothing made to last or even to withstand the buffets of feelings, much less time. ‘Well, there’s no accounting for some people.’

 _There’s no accounting for me,_ Anders thought, but even that wasn’t what this was about and even he knew it wouldn’t pass. Not without comment. Not under Varric’s unflinching gaze.

‘There were spit-bubbles,’ Anders said. ‘It reminded me of a traumatic experience I had with another dwarf friend of mine, one with more skull than brain, but that was good for all the knocks it got. And also, this place…’

‘It does that to a person.’ Varric moved closer to the rampart’s edge, head barely poking over the top of the wall. ‘It does that to _Hawke_ , which is why he doesn’t stay. You work hard for something and you get it and you see how quick it can all be taken away—sure, you want to protect it, but sticking around’s harder for that than not sometimes.’

‘Varric, with all this wisdom, you really should write a book,’ Anders told him.

‘No kidding?’ Varric’s voice was grinning even if his mouth wasn’t. ‘You know, I never thought of that.’

‘One wonders how you ever got on without me around to look after you,’ Anders added. It was unfair, too-sharp a comment to come straight off the cuff like that, but Varric was as tough as a chevalier’s breastplate. He looked like the sort of dwarf who could take it.

Most of all, it was important to keep reminding the people he could about the differences between him and their other spirit healer. When he didn’t—when he allowed those lines to blur—it led to kissing. And while Varric was the best friend he’d ever had, at least in another life and another city, Anders didn’t feel like catching a bolt through his backside from a jealous hunk of burnished gold. Not that he believed all the rubbish about Bianca. But Varric did and Anders knew—from a lifetime of looking over his shoulder for the next templar, the telltale clank of greaves or the swish of scarlet sun-skirts—that belief was a dangerous thing, capable of clapping you in irons and landing you in solitary or worse.

Anders bore the token of another kind of belief in his pocket, solid and home-made and very small, the way nothing from the chantry ever was. It was a simple a thank-you for the things Anders had done with his own two hands and because of the cowl no one else could mistake him for who he wasn’t in Wildervale.

Even if it was obvious some wounds had been left unhealed, another man’s work left unfinished.

Anders did what he could to heal _that_ , too, old impulses making it impossible for him to ignore any festering thing. There was no imitation or pretense in the clinic, nothing but his healer’s instincts and the tug of magic waiting to flow freely at the slightest wiggle of his fingertips. This was something Anders could do even though it wore him more ragged than clearing broodmother tentacles from Kal’Hirol.

Sitting on the edge of an unoccupied bed, fingers streaked with someone else’s blood and sweating under the cloak, Anders had never once thought of fleeing—or of nipping back to his room for a quick nap in a patch of sunlight.

But he’d never been much for self-examination. Otherwise, he might have been forced to ask himself what it all meant.

‘They really gave _you_ a _baby_?’ Varric asked, breaking the silence.

‘Not to keep,’ Anders said, as though all Varric needed was a simple clarification. He leaned away from the rampart, stretching his arms as he held tight to the edge. ‘It isn’t as if I don’t know how to hold something small and wriggly—I _do_ have Ser Pounce-a-lot. …it’s just that whenever Ser Pounce-a-lot got naughty I could always leave him in my robes to cool off for an hour or so or leave him alone in my room to think about what he’d done. He could chase mice, nap in the sunlight, lick himself wherever—that sort of thing. Other people’s children don’t really follow the same guidelines.’

‘The important thing, I think, is that you recognize the difference.’ Varric reached up to pat Anders on the back, a gesture that had the contradictory effect of making him feel better and worse simultaneously. Anders had to wonder if being a dwarf—Varric’s type of dwarf—was more like being a mage than anyone let on, part of a magic squatter and closer to the ground than the usual form. Denser than an arcane shield but just as powerful—that was Varric all over. ‘Don’t hang around up here too long, Blondie. All the fresh air’s gonna go right to your head. And then you might miss dinner, and you’ll be a cranky as that baby.’

Anders nodded, knowing it was for his own good, that Varric had only come up to visit and advise and make sure he wasn’t about to jump. It was kind of him, but kindness was all too often the wrong sentiment. What Anders needed was the Warden Commander’s firmness or Nathaniel’s dismissive trust, Oghren’s bleary good humor or Sigrun’s wary curiosity. They all knew him, what they liked and what they didn’t like about him, which meant they weren’t careful around him—not anymore.

Anything they did was as much for their own good as it was for his. No one went out of his way to do him a special favor just because he wore the face of a long dead hero.

All he wanted was to be treated like a companion instead of an uninvited guest. But it was difficult to express that to someone who’d commissioned the transportation of an Eluvian just to get Anders back to where he belonged.

Anders couldn’t decide if that was a better present or a worse one than something simple, a fluffy stray kitten or a warm woolly scarf, an earring or, perhaps, a carved bauble of wood.

‘Do you think they’ve replenished their stores of bacon since yesterday morning?’ Anders asked.

He turned away from the horizon and the cool breezes stirring his hair where it had come loose. There were no answers to be found in the vast, endless plains of the Free Marches or in Wildervale’s protected courtyard, with its statue of a man he felt closer to than ever.

Statue-Anders was the sort of person people _named_ their children after rather than the sort they enlisted as a nursemaid. There was a difference—in terms of importance, yes, but mostly in terms of scale.

Following Varric down the stairs, hood back in place as they entered the keep, Anders realized he didn’t know which he preferred.

*


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke returns from Starkhaven, in need of healing.

It was long past dinner two nights later, Anders engaged in a staring contest with the last volumes of Varric’s magnum opus—dreading the ominous turn of all the heavy pages—when he heard the commotion in the halls. Anders didn’t need Varric to give him a pointed look to feel it and he wasted too much time getting the cowl and the cloak back on before he unlocked Hawke’s door and headed out to snoop.

That sort of attention to detail, careful and cautious as it was, stood between a man and his gossip, between being first on the scene and being the last to know what was happening. Anders never thought of himself as the sort for whom being number one was the most important thing—but he didn’t appreciate being number one-hundred, either.

There was a crowd outside Varric’s door smaller than the noise its members were making, Keran and Alain and Feynriel bustling someone inside and Varric breaking away from them, looking to Anders as though he’d known all along he’d come running.

‘Good to see you,’ he said. ‘Now get inside.’

It was the same tone the Warden Commander used for all his real orders, not the ones joked about around the table at Vigil’s Keep or their table at the Crown and Lion. Sometimes a man issued commands in order to keep the peace, made with a calm tone and a steady hand; sometimes he shouted them in the heat of battle, hands gripping steel, in order to keep everyone alive.

This seemed like the latter. Anders slipped between Keran and Alain and into Varric’s room.

‘Everything’s fine now,’ he heard Varric saying behind him. ‘We’ve got a healer, remember? And not a moment too soon. That’s why I don’t listen when people act like we’re _unlucky_ or something. It’s just the way that luck chooses to manifest itself. All right—I’ll be in touch, gentlemen.’

‘Varric—’ Keran began.

‘I could always—’ Alain added.

‘If you need anything,’ Feynriel concluded, ‘we’ll be here.’

‘Lingering outside like it’s the eve before Feastday—and don’t I know it,’ Varric said.

The door fell shut with everyone else on the other side of it, but Anders was no longer paying attention to what was happening on that end of Varric’s room because all the most important things were happening on the opposite one.

Varric tsked, tongue against the back of his teeth. ‘Rumors’ll be flying, like they always do,’ he said. ‘Don’t think you could’ve made it in here with a _little_ more circumspection, huh, elf?’

Fenris, standing before them both, lowered Hawke onto the couch. The left side of his armor was darkened by old blood, one of his gauntlets torn loose. Hawke himself was nothing more than a shadow in the dying firelight, broad shoulders still proud beneath the bulk of his pauldrons. Fenris turned toward them, though he was still half-crouched at Hawke’s side, one hand in its sharp glove steadying him.

‘I have asked myself this already,’ Fenris replied, ‘and it is not _all_ I have asked myself either. But there is no point, no _purpose_ in demanding of oneself why a companion did not dodge an arrow—for such questions will not heal him.’

‘But I know who will,’ Varric said.

Anders could smell the blood in the room, the sweat, the tang of metal and leather, dust from the open road, all of it more immediate than the dark look on Fenris’s face, his twisted lips, his scouring expression. It was almost anticipatory as much as it was condemning and Anders pretended for a moment that was the point, a confused person’s version of outright encouragement.

Anders could also tell there was an urgency to the situation like history repeating itself, as though he’d been in this same room before, about to heal this same injured man. The magic was probably the same, though sharing that made him more uncomfortable than sharing a silly name or a silly pillow or even a silly face.

‘Do what you must,’ Fenris told him.

‘That’s all a man can do,’ Varric agreed. ‘Even if, sometimes…’

Anders swallowed. ‘Even if, sometimes, he doesn’t.’

When he removed his cowl, Fenris at last looked away, head bowed before Hawke’s with their brows pressed together. They murmured something private and Hawke lifted a hand to shoo him off; it was Fenris’s turn to tsk, a noise of formless and age-old frustration.

Fenris wasn’t a healer, just someone who dealt regularly with people in need of healing—and Anders imagined that could be as tiresome as it was for someone who _was_ a healer, whose job _was_ healing them.

‘Someone stoke the fire,’ Anders said, folding the cloak in his arms. He set it at Hawke’s side in case they needed it, provisions for warmth or to stop the flow of blood. He pressed his fingers to Hawke’s pulse, beneath the bristles of his beard, and Hawke swallowed, almost in protest. ‘An arrow, is it?’

‘Only _one_ ,’ Hawke replied. ‘It isn’t as though I haven’t seen my fair share of them before. Countless volleys. Some of them from _my_ side, thank you, Varric.’

‘It’s not really the arrow,’ Anders told him, ‘but where the arrow _lands_. That’s the difference.’

‘Or my fair share of high dragons and arishoks,’ Hawke added. Anders stripped away his pauldrons to make room, dropping them onto his cloak and cowl, checking beneath his gorget. There, somewhere below his collarbone, between his bare shoulder and the metal, lodged in nothing more solid than beaten leather, was the broken shaft. ‘Really, _one_ little arrow— And Fenris broke it off so easily—’

‘Pfaugh,’ Fenris said from where he knelt, down by the fire to toss more kindling onto the flames.

‘It wasn’t even the King of Starkhaven’s.’ Hawke refused to be still or to be silent, though it was obvious to Anders stillness and silence was all his body wanted. Varric was in the process of lighting lamps and candles in every sconce on the wall, but it remained difficult to see the wound with so much armor over it, Anders’s hands coming away sticky. ‘Just a simple soldier’s. I told Fenris it was impossible—and also unfair—and he told me it’s not impossible _because_ it’s unfair. _Then_ I _think_ he told me to shut up…’

‘Something of that nature,’ Fenris said. ‘This fire—is it enough?’

‘For now,’ Anders said. His fingers found the buckles fastening Hawke’s gorget over his chest, undoing them to bare the area for easier access. ‘You’ll have to keep it that way. Good healing needs good light.’

‘You’re all making _such_ a fuss.’ Hawke moved as if he meant to help Anders by undressing, then winced, the expression caught in the flickering light from a fat stick of tallow Varric had lit near his head. ‘Don’t you remember when I fought the Knight-Commander single-handedly, Varric?’

‘There were _seven_ of us at the time, Hawke,’ Varric said. ‘Not counting a few notable guest appearances. And as your personal biographer, I feel obligated to remind you that you used _both_ hands in that dust-up. No shame, though. There _were_ giant statues involved.’

‘Everybody’s a critic.’ Hawke’s head lolled comfortably back against the cushions on Varric’s sofa. Some of the tension in his shoulders and chest went slack, gaze flickering over Anders as he undid the buttons at Hawke’s sides. His jaw went taut when Anders finally drew his shirtfront down, the fabric around the wound dark and tacky with blood. ‘Varric’s the only one around here who gets away with lying, you know.’

‘I know,’ Anders murmured, fond despite how exasperating a patient Hawke was proving to be. It wasn’t surprising. Anders would have pegged him as the sort from the start. ‘It’s terribly unfair—not to mention both of you spoiling the story for me.’

The mark of a good healer was his bedside manner. People felt better when someone was kind to them, and feeling better was halfway along the road to true recovery. Of course, that philosophy went to pieces when a man was stubborn, when he insisted he felt better from the beginning, when he still had an arrow buried in his shoulder. Real hurt required real attention, more than the simple flush of gratitude that came from a friendly comment.

Anders laid his hands on either side of the arrow’s shaft, kneeling on the floor at Hawke’s side. He could feel heat radiating from the injury like a fever and beneath that was Hawke’s shallow breathing, the swift, staccato beat of his heart, his muscles laboring to keep him still. His skin was slick with sweat and sticky with blood, the muddy crimson matting his chest hair down around the point of entry, where the arrow had pierced flesh.

‘I’m going to take it out,’ Anders said. When he looked up, he was surprised to find Hawke looking back at him, eyes hooded beneath the half-fall of their lids, gold threading the brown like the sparks of a firestone. His bangs were streaked with damp, skin glistening in the bright light Anders had requested. There were no shadows in which the lines of Hawke’s face could hide.

He licked his lips, then bit the leftmost corner, where there was a sprinkling of pale gray in his beard, the size of Anders’s thumbnail.

‘Do it,’ Hawke said.

He didn’t grit his teeth.

Fenris bent over the hearth to feed the flames, though what he really wanted was to brace Hawke’s arm and hand with his own; Varric set another candle behind Hawke’s head on the little end table. And thanks to their actions, Anders knew he couldn’t hold back—not when everyone else was being so brave. He ignored how hard it was to tear his eyes from Hawke’s face, a deception that came easily when there was something more important to focus on.

The arrowhead was fortunately slim, not flared at the base the way Orlesians preferred but a more aerodynamic design—made to kill rather than to wound. In some ways, Hawke was lucky that Starkhaven’s defenses were so serious, the same luck Varric had mentioned earlier. Luck found in unlucky situations, slipping through each scrape by the skin of your teeth.

Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to dislodge the arrow from his shoulder, drawing it out through torn muscle and punctured skin, but there were no barbs and no snags and nothing more challenging than a clean, slim shaft of sharpened metal.

Hawke ground his teeth and Anders only realized he was holding his breath when his pulse flared up, pounding at his temples as his lungs demanded fresh air.

The projectile came free with a slithering _pop_. The sound of suction was a welcome one, because it meant the bolt had done its job, staunching the flow of blood.

It was only after the arrow was out that Hawke buckled, cursing a streak from Fereldan to Marcher epithets and throwing in a few colorful expressions that sounded Antivan in origin, or possibly Rivaini.

‘As your healer, I’d advise _against_ doing something like that with a goat,’ Anders said. His voice sounded distant, as though Feynriel had stolen it in the night, to project from faraway or puppet him about. ‘Because it’s all fun and games until you get the itching down below.’ He held the shaft of the arrow out to Varric without looking, pressing the palm of his right hand over the new swell of scarlet blood seeping from below muscle and just above bone. ‘Then, they _all_ come crying to Anders. As lonely as we all get sometimes—and trust me, I know how it is, I _really_ do—there’s got to be a better way. Less furry. Less bleating.’

‘Tch.’ Fenris shifted in his place by the mantle. ‘I cannot see how we did not recognize you from the start.’

‘Anders,’ Hawke said. Something tickled against Anders’s hip and beneath his elbow. It was Hawke’s fingers scrabbling for purchase, something to hold onto against the rising throb of pain in his shoulder.

Any other man would have fallen unconscious by now. But Hawke wasn’t any other man. He wasn’t woven of the same mettle as the Warden Commander; he was just equally stubborn. That was the same stubbornness that made great things happen—because obstinate men refused to quit while they were ahead, as though standing your ground ever made so obvious a point as fleeing.

Someone had to be that person. It took all types to build a village or to rebuild a city and to populate it after, then to make it interesting. Anders recognized the impulse but in the end it was more of the same: people who refused to see reason causing great things and terrible things in equal measure, always at the center of trouble to court it when it came.

If Anders wasn’t careful, he could get caught up in the storm, protected or torn apart by that chaos.

‘Shh.’ Anders patted Hawke’s arm with his free hand, palm over the tattoo, red blood on red ink. His other hand was right where it belonged—a few inches shy of Hawke’s heart, something cool to numb the pain before the arcane warmth began to heal it. ‘It’s over now. You’re not impressing anyone; I’ve seen it all before.’

‘Tell me more about your goats, Anders,’ Hawke said.

‘They aren’t _my_ goats,’ Anders replied. ‘If they were, don’t you think I’d be angrier about it?’

Hawke’s muscles began to relax under his touch. He was fighting now for the principle of the matter, not because he wanted to but because he thought he had to. There were only friends in the room—friends and a well-meaning stranger, which was all a good healer could hope to be these days—and maybe that was what made it harder for him to let go. Maybe Hawke was one of the rare few men who knew how important it was to impress those who mattered first and everyone else later, but Anders couldn’t do his job if Hawke refused to sleep.

‘I could knock him over the head for you if you’d like,’ Varric offered. ‘I’ve always wanted to. You’d be doing me a favor, really.’

‘I feel concerned that someone who’d say such a terrible thing is currently in the room with me,’ Hawke said.

‘If only you’d done it _before_ he left for Starkhaven.’ Anders soothed his palm over Hawke’s chest, through the blood and the sweat, over shivering skin and shivering hair. There were patches of gray threaded like silver through the darkness, catching the light whenever he breathed. But all Anders could see was the wound, the blood pumped slow from the beating of his heart, steadying despite his better efforts. ‘You could have saved us all the trouble. Hawke especially—but Fenris too. And he seems so cranky.’

‘Oh, that.’ Varric was somewhere else now, neither he nor Fenris knowing how to help despite how much they deserved to be in Anders’s place—kneeling at their friend’s side, holding his hand, healing his torn flesh. They’d done their time, years of it, but they didn’t have the magic. Anders did. He thought about how unfair it was, that it worked both ways for and against everyone, but Hawke’s chest steadied him, rising and falling and rising again. ‘That’s just Fenris’s face. It does that. And that’s not all it does, either. In fact, I’d say he’s holding up pretty well, all things considered—unlike some people who just _have_ to be the center of attention.’

‘You love it, Varric,’ Hawke said. ‘I give you so much to work with. Can’t wait to hear all about it at breakfast tomorrow. Make me sound heroic, would you?’

‘Maybe not heroic,’ Varric promised. ‘But definitely like a champion.’

Hawke caught Anders’s wrist after that, stroking the bone with his callused thumb. He stared at Anders while Anders bit his lip, unconsciously mirroring the same thing Hawke had done moments ago.

It seemed to soothe him even more than the magic did.

‘Don’t let them get up to too much trouble, would you, Anders?’ Hawke’s head bobbed, then snapped up, just before the motion pulled at his muscles and his whole body regretted it. ‘I can’t take my eyes off them for an instant. They _seem_ to think there’s some sort of hierarchy to accepting arrows when really—what was it you said? Something about where they hit, not what they are… Also, you’ve been spending too much time with Varric. He’s going to woo you if we’re not careful, and _that_ would never work. Too high maintenance. Isn’t that right, Varric?’

‘Shh,’ Anders repeated. He held Hawke’s bare shoulder, sliding up onto the couch beside him and into the mess of his pauldrons and his crumpled cloak. The fur was fuzzy at his knees, almost ticklish. Hawke leaned into his chest.

‘Ah,’ he said. Just one word—and it was barely a word at all, more like a sigh, his breath on Anders’s throat. He’d run out all the other words already and that was all he had left, air squeezed from an empty bellows trying to encourage a dying fire.

Anders rested his chin against Hawke’s brow and on the sweaty fall of his hair, his lips pressed into the smell—like rain and sunlight and more blood. Skin knitted itself to skin beneath his touch, his fingers spreading wider as the wound closed up tight.

‘This is so much better,’ Hawke said. He went limp a moment later, Anders holding him, all warm and vulnerable despite not being a baby. He was about as dirty as one.

‘It’s all right,’ Anders whispered as Fenris took a step forward. ‘He’s just resting. Rest is good for people.’

‘Something nobody else around here seems to believe in, but I’ve got your back on this one, Blondie.’ Varric motioned for Fenris to follow him. When Fenris hesitated, all brittle edges and spiky straps of interlocking armor, Anders didn’t have to see Varric’s face to know he’d cocked a brow. ‘Hawke doesn’t need someone to guard him, all right? Not here. You’ve got information and somebody else has the magic touch. We’ve gotta meet with the others and make sure panic doesn’t spread. And Hawke…’

‘Hawke requires something else,’ Fenris agreed. ‘Yes. I… _understand_.’

‘Thank you for bringing him back in one piece,’ Anders added. Fenris drew his upper lip over his teeth in a sneer, responding to the unseen slight in Anders’s words. ‘No, no—that was a compliment. I meant it. _Really_. People rarely ever fire a volley of one single arrow, which means there were probably more before and most importantly after.’ He spoke softly, palm lingering over Hawke’s closed wound. ‘Everyone makes such a fuss about the one that hits that they completely forget about the skill it takes to avoid the rest. …Especially when you’re dragging a stubborn, injured lump of a man who wouldn’t know to keep his head down if his life depended on it. Which is _terrible,_ considering how often it seems to.’

‘You were…thanking me,’ Fenris said. It wasn’t a question, but the shadowed light in his eyes made it sound like one.

‘That _would_ be why I said ‘thank you,’’ Anders replied, unable to help himself. ‘We mages do like to confound our friends and enemies at equal turns; I’m amazed you cracked the secret code, Fenris.’

‘All right,’ Varric said, breaking in before voices were raised and champions disturbed. ‘You’re _both_ very important to Hawke. One might even say he likes you equally, and that liking one of you doesn’t mean he can’t like the other. Problem solved, right? Elf—let’s get going. You know how Keran talks when he’s worried, and we _both_ know how quickly that talk can spread in the keep.’

‘Indeed.’ Fenris cut a dry look in his direction. ‘It is knowledge _you_ use to your advantage often, if I am not mistaken.’

‘Why do you think I’m so keen to get out ahead of the pack?’ Varric asked. His gaze passed over Hawke, then traveled to the door, as though the sympathetic glance had been nothing more than a trick of the light—which was fading now that Fenris wasn’t standing sentinel to keep it stoked and blazing.

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Anders promised, exaggerated whispering softening. ‘I know I don’t have the most trustworthy of faces, but just think about what _he’d_ want.’

‘A clever tactic.’ Fenris gestured toward the door.

Varric shrugged. ‘He’s got us there,’ he said.

They left together, easily the strangest pair Anders had seen in Wildervale, though not surpassing Oghren’s best efforts to charm Velanna into his malodorous smalls. Varric shut the door behind them, locking it with a firm _click_ that stirred Anders’s nerves even as he felt the expectations easing into silence and silence into relaxation. No one would interrupt them now—no one could sneak up on them without Anders hearing the bolt flip first—and even if it was a false sense of security, slim as a cotton cloak drawn like a curtain between them and the rest of Wildervale, it would keep them hidden for a time.

He’d have to thank Varric later for his consideration. He must have figured they’d be safe under Bianca’s supervision, the glint of her lath across the room winking at them.

Anders couldn’t bring himself to tense up, not with the Hawke’s body braced heavy against him and his chest rising and falling in shallow bursts. Anders traced the lines of warm, corded muscle over his chest, checking for further injury as much as he was indulging himself. Sometimes, smaller hurts could be forgotten in the wake of something more serious—but that didn’t mean they disappeared or ceased to matter when all was counted in the last of days.

Dark bruises littered Hawke’s ribs like a collection of plum-dark petals, as if he’d rolled down a ravine making his escape from Starkhaven. It was the work of a scant few seconds for Anders to call another burst of arcane healing, little globes of light stretching from his fingertips to seep into Hawke’s skin, something that began with him and ended with someone else the same as it always did. He watched the light wink out beneath the twitching of Hawke’s flesh and saw the shift and stretch as healing power—bright, ceaseless energies—woke the man beneath.

‘I’m fine,’ Hawke murmured, his words slurred and warm. The hair at his brow tickled Anders’s when he stirred. ‘You’re fussing.’

‘ _You’re_ stubborn,’ Anders replied. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to teach your healer how to close wounds?’

Hawke sighed. Anders bowed his head to get a better look at him, eyelids heavy where he’d struggled to open them, gold-brown iris a narrow band of color around the sudden width of his pupils. The expanse of that unexpected darkness threatened to swallow Anders whole.

It would have been so easy to sink into it just as he’d sunk into the couch and the heat from Hawke’s skin. His fingers ran between the ridges of Hawke’s ribs, checking to make sure he’d done his job with the collection of bruises there. If Anders focused his thoughts on healing—and only healing, a job that needed doing, hurts that needed fixing—perhaps he’d stop feeling like an intruder here.

But he couldn’t treat Hawke like any other patient—not knowing what he knew and not looking into his eyes, as though they were more to one other than ill-met strangers.

‘I held a baby while you were gone,’ Anders said. His voice was soft, with none of the edge and tenor he used to seek attention. ‘Well—I delivered him first. _Ugliest_ thing I’ve ever seen, Hawke, but how do you tell that to a new mother? You don’t. You simply can’t.’

‘Get you a fine slap in the face for your honesty,’ Hawke agreed.

‘Exactly. So you have to flatter them—the mothers—because they get so cranky otherwise. Cranky like Fenris. But who wants to go through all that work to wind up with some crying, needy thing in the end? Something you have to look after _more_ now, instead of less?’ Anders rifled his fingers through the damp hair at the back of Hawke’s neck, smoothing it out after he mussed it up. He told himself it was the same thing he’d do for any other patient even if it wasn’t; he was only distracting Hawke from the gestures he needed but didn’t want, the magic he thought he was strong enough to muscle past.

He was a mage, but just because he should have known better didn’t mean he did. They had that much in common, even if they had different memories and different wants.

‘Can’t imagine it myself,’ Hawke said.

Anders sighed, fingers stilling. ‘Well, I suppose it’s reasonable. They _have_ just been in labor. I don’t like to think about it anymore than I have to, not on a personal level; it’s there and it’s all a part of the job, the calling, whatever you call it. I’m not being _squeamish_ , mind you. Just practical. There’s so much shouting and screaming and someone trying to break your hand, and in the end you can say it’s the most beautiful one you’ve ever seen and everyone’s happy, at least for a little while. One more mouth to feed, but most of the time it’s a cause for celebration.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Hawke told him.

‘I know.’ Anders pulled his bloody hand free of another patch of healed bruises. ‘Me neither. Do you want to know a secret?’

‘I’m better at keeping them than Varric,’ Hawke said. ‘You won’t find it spread out in the pages of _Wild in Wildervale_ for a few cheap sovereigns and a few even cheaper laughs.’

‘Sounds like a book I’d reread constantly,’ Anders admitted. He leaned his cheek against Hawke’s brow again and Hawke accepted it, warmer for comfort than a wordless, squealing infant, a bundle of overwhelming needs and no less annoying than a newborn nug. ‘I was just distracting you. Can’t tell me you’re all right and you don’t need any more healing if I’m babbling some story about babies and mothers and you’re trying to figure out what it all means.’

‘A distraction?’ Hawke asked.

‘The very thing,’ Anders replied.

‘You’re as wicked as Varric, you know,’ Hawke said.

‘Just not as lusciously hairy,’ Anders agreed.

Hawke almost chuckled at that. He was better now, no pain except for the old aches, just weary from days of traveling on empty and forcing himself to stay awake. When he winced, Anders knew it was a reaction to his perception of laughing—what it meant and why it was allowed—more than any physical manifestation of physical injury. Anders frowned because it was a good joke and a good exchange—and those things deserved good humor in return, good laughter, just as fine for distraction as any bullshit story.

That was the only medicine a poultice or a potion couldn’t offer but something Anders could as a person with a tremendous sense of timing—for better or for worse. He was proud of it.

But Hawke was too stubborn in too many ways.

Anders took the opportunity to check his body again, flanked with broad slants of muscle, his hips and his thighs tightening under Anders’s touch. Anders found a few bramble scrapes and tears in Hawke’s trousers and a split lace but nothing that ran deep enough to matter, bruises that made Hawke shiver but not shudder, a difference that meant everything.

‘What did I tell you?’ Hawke asked.

‘So many things.’ Anders sniffed. ‘It’s hard to remember all of them.’

Hawke didn’t turn his face toward the fire or bat Anders’s hands away, letting them rest against his sides with no more purpose than comfort. That was a healing touch he probably didn’t want, either, or didn’t need, but he allowed it in silence for a long time anyway, Anders trying to think of something to say.

 _I had a lot of bacon_ wasn’t as interesting as _I delivered a baby_ , and _Did you know all your friends are generally evil?_ needed a more subtle approach, something to let Hawke know how dangerous they were when they got together. _I think I came here because of an Eluvian_ might have been the best thing, the most straightforward, only it was meant for a man who hadn’t been run bone-dry the past few days, fleeing enemy territory with an arrow buried in his shoulder and the wound taking to fever.

Anders wanted to share things, many things, but for once his tongue was heavy in his throat, all the petty words that meant nothing run dry. He could have said anything he wanted to. It shouldn’t have mattered whether it was the precise thing or the right thing—but it _did_ matter and he fell silent as the tomb. Or silent as the Hawke, each of them breathing, not completely in time.

‘They’re planning a march on Wildervale,’ Hawke said at last. His voice made Anders startle, then feel ashamed, jostling the patient in his arms despite how comfortable things had been and how comfortable they should have stayed. ‘…You know, I think I need to work on my conversation skills. I _used_ to be funny.’

‘I’ll be funny for both of us,’ Anders offered. ‘Just…give me a moment. Hard to make a joke out of an Exalted March, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.’

Hawke chuckled, but it wasn’t the laughter Anders wanted or the laughter Hawke needed, just a parched sound, maybe closer to a cough than anything else. ‘That’s…unexpected. What’s next—jokes about blood mages?’

‘Always makes me think of what else might be out there,’ Anders said. ‘Spit mages or sweat mages or—no, that’s the sort of thing I can only share with Oghren when he’s very drunk and won’t remember it. So inappropriate. Don’t listen to me.’

‘I like listening to you,’ Hawke said.

Anders had to wonder if he was the mage equivalent of punch drunk: sloppy and sleepy and more affected by the blood loss, the effort it took to stay strong, than he let on.

‘Then you’ll love this next idea.’ Anders lifted his hand to curl his fingers in Hawke’s hair, brushing the damp back from his ear where the silver threads grew thicker and thicker. All animals—whether they were large, intelligent mages or small, orange cats—liked getting pets. It was a desire for simple attention that was nigh-on universal, soothing without words, the most basic healing touch. True to form, Hawke’s head settled close to Anders’s shoulder, cheek against his collarbone, sweating onto his feathers. ‘Here’s what I’m thinking: we start _another_ mage city, this time in the heart of Rivain. It’s a defensible position, being on an island, and as I understand it you have an in with a fearsome pirate who calls it home? It’s the perfect plan: we’ll all turn raiders. _You_ can wear an earring. We’ll sharpen the bottom ends of our staffs and spear fish that way, and in the summer we can all have _rituals_ with _bonfires_. I hear Rivaini seers are very happy people, and who wouldn’t be, getting naked all the time and inhaling too much smoke?’

His fingers trailed low, tweaking Hawke’s soft earlobe between his knuckles as he spoke. Hawke made a soft noise under his breath, that same dry laugh that made it sound like there was something stuck in his throat.

Maybe he’d gotten a hairball from his pauldrons.

‘I think the look suits you better,’ Hawke said. ‘Some men have the natural charm for earrings; others just seem like they’re trying too hard to be Varric Tethras.’

There was no judgment in the pronouncement like there had been when Nathaniel questioned the wisdom of wearing jewelry into battle. _An additional vulnerability,_ he’d called it; he refused to laugh when Anders suggested they all get matching ones as part of Warden camaraderie.

Hawke’s observation was merely that: an observation, much like ‘Varric is an exceptional liar,’ or ‘Fenris, that stick up your backside suits you tremendously.’ Yet the statement’s proximity to an actual compliment was enough to kindle a glimmer of pride, fires stoked by Hawke’s expert touch.

‘I’ve been helping out,’ Anders added, the admission coming soft and not without some hesitation. He knew the sort of reply Hawke would be expecting—the same anyone would expect of Anders back home, whenever someone complimented him on his appearance. Compliments didn’t last; they were embers, glimmers, short-lived bursts of heat a man had to spread thinner and thinner until they disappeared and he needed more. _Always_ more. They came naturally to some; others had to chase them. But for once Anders wasn’t taken by the urge to flirt shamelessly with the nearest handsome man or pretty woman; instead, he wanted to earn the look Hawke was currently giving him, flames from the hearth reflected in the darks of his eyes. ‘They needed a healer around here, apparently, and it turns out I’m simply _awful_ at everything else. I’m surprised you didn’t hear Captain Jamos hollering about me all the way to Starkhaven. _That’s not how you fill a brazier—and now half of Wildervale’s dead, and we have the hooded man to thank for it! Everyone turn around and thank the hooded man._ ’

Hawke’s mouth twisted into something crooked, chapped lips vulnerable where he’d been biting them. Anders realized he was smiling, or at least attempting to recreate the expression he’d seen on other people, one he remembered distantly from a mirror in the past. It was a poor imitation but the effort managed to remind Anders of the little red infant he’d held in his arms, how vulnerable its soft head had felt resting in the crook of his elbow.

Hawke was a far cry from a newborn baby. But Anders felt the same awkward yearning to look after him tempered by the fear that he wouldn’t prove capable of such a monumental task.

‘You’re a good healer,’ Hawke said. Anders could feel him shifting, right arm trapped between their bodies. ‘We needed someone like you. …And then, there you were.’

 _I came through an Eluvian,_ Anders tried to say, but the words stuck in his throat like one of Hawke’s laughs. Saying it now would only bring Hawke’s responsibilities back to mind, disrupting the easy flow of their conversation.

Hawke didn’t need to know how Anders had come here; he _especially_ didn’t need to think about how to get him back.

‘So you kidnapped me for the good of your little village, is that?’ Anders’s knuckles brushed the warm and sweaty stretch of Hawke’s bare neck. ‘I suppose that’s a forgivable offense. Much nicer than if you’d taken me for a lark because you _so_ enjoy snatching people from their beds.’

‘We needed you,’ Hawke repeated.

 _Need_ and _want_ ; the words represented so much and Hawke wasn’t the sort of man to say _I_. Anders blinked, his eyes blown wide from the heat and the light, trying to focus on all the shadows when what he saw better was the golden skin, each groove of weariness, the silver in the beard at the corner of Hawke’s mouth.

Anders couldn’t help it.

He kissed him.

It wasn’t with the same recklessness he’d indulged in earlier, mouth closing over Hawke’s like it was the only salve for the burn he felt. It was gentle instead, soft lips fitting carefully against the dry cracks where the cold had damaged Hawke’s skin. Anders hadn’t thought to heal those smaller hurts, but he was mindful of them now.

There were many places Hawke was still in need of healing, places that required more than a simple burst of arcane heat from Anders’s fingertips.

Then, Anders drew away, long before he wanted to—which was how he knew it was the right timing at last—thumb tracing half-formed sigils against the shallow pulse at Hawke’s temple.

‘Get some rest,’ Anders said, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘You say that,’ Hawke replied, ‘and yet…’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Anders repeated.

Hawke didn’t want to believe him, and he had no reason to—he didn’t know the combination of finicky desires it took to say a thing like that and mean it, half having nowhere else to go and half having nowhere else you’d rather be. It was one part being trapped and three parts longing, or three parts selfishness, but even though Anders’s legs were cramping he couldn’t imagine moving away now, not even to get more comfortable.

Once he shifted, the spell would be broken. Hawke’s easy weight, the hold of Anders’s arms—all shields shattered when a mage lost concentration. No shield could hold forever, but there were times when it held for long enough.

‘I’ll regret this in the morning.’ Hawke sighed. ‘…Not that I haven’t said something like that before, mind you. Not that I haven’t enjoyed it.’

‘If we moved to the bed, we’d probably get blood on one of Varric’s pillows,’ Anders added.

Hawke took the opportunity to pillow his head against Anders’s shoulder, each of his breaths tickling through the cozy clumps of feathers. ‘Not to mention we’d scandalize Bianca.’

‘Then it’s settled,’ Anders said. ‘We’ll have to stay here.’

If only everything else could have been so simple—Hawke’s other questions unspoken, his other worries unmentioned, everything put off until morning. Anders understood Feynriel’s actions better now even if he’d never agree with them. It wasn’t impossible to fall asleep with so much riding on the next morning, but it wasn’t pleasant, either, dreams that flitted in and out of waking like snaps in the wood as each branch in the fireplace burned blacker and blacker until finally they paled again, cool gray against the stone, dead and dormant and done.

*


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke and Anders wake together; Anders meets Cricket; Varric helps Anders come to a dramatic decision.

Anders woke with the predictable aches in his thighs, muscles pulled taut, joints protesting. His lower back was the worst off, his ankles numb, his knees popping like Hawke’s after a long journey. His neck was stiff, too, and his shoulders, his fingers knotted together, elbow bent at a wrong angle, lips buried in someone’s hair.

‘Yeugh,’ Anders said, trying to spit a few stray hairs off his tongue. His mouth tasted like that hair smelled, and neither were particularly pleasant.

‘That’s one way to say good morning,’ Hawke said, voice muffled by too many feathers. ‘Does damage to a man’s ego, but I’m sure I’ve taken worse.’

They peeled away from one another slowly, like any bandage stuck to the skin with so much blood. It hurt and it took a while, and not just because of physical reluctance but because of the cool air that filtered in between them, the loss of warmth that wouldn’t be replicated just by sliding back together again.

Anders managed to straighten one leg, then the other, groaning the whole way. Whatever noises of pain and protest Hawke made were drowned out by Anders’s grand display of agony, which would allow Hawke to gasp and wince and grimace as much as he liked—unless he was the sort to pretend for his own sake just as much as the others’.

That might have been the case, Anders suspected, but words were currently somewhere beyond him, rubbing his hands from his thighs to his shins and back again. He was still half trapped in the Fade, waiting for his mind to clear and his eyes to blink the last of sleep from their lashes; until then, he wouldn’t call on any spells, susceptible as he was to the final, faint whispers of promise: the spirits and demons that dined together regularly in the Fade and waited for someone unsuspecting to invite themselves to the table.

‘This is even worse than the morning after Kal’Hirol,’ Anders moaned finally, halfway through an uncovered yawn. Something blue, something arcane, something laced with little white veins, inched its way past his fingertips, soaking deep through his twinging muscles.

‘Oh, good,’ Hawke said. ‘I love it when sleeping with me is comparable to a jaunt in the Deep Roads—and not in the good ways.’

‘The good ways?’ Anders asked.

Hawke caught his eye. There were a few creases, feather vanes and barbs lining the side of his cheek where he rubbed at it, smoothing out the skin. ‘All the darkness, the danger, the tentacles—’

‘Say no more,’ Anders said. ‘I take your point.’

He flexed his toes and felt his feet again; that was a start. Hawke was still bent against the couch, rubbing his own shoulder with white knuckles, testing the roll in the joint with an impressed shrug. He didn’t meet Anders’s eyes again, bare chest and blood-stained body beneath the grizzle of his untrimmed beard, and Anders felt like the worst healer all of Thedas had ever seen, much less Wildervale.

‘I let you sleep here all night,’ Anders said. ‘I didn’t even clean you up or give you your shirt back or anything.’

‘Can’t imagine what the others will think,’ Hawke agreed. There was something coy about the low cast of his eyes and the shadowy fall of his dark lashes, the way he refused to look at Anders now—but not because of anything standing between them. It wasn’t something he thought he saw but rather something he might be about to see, and the distinction made Anders’s ribs feel tight and brittle against his swelling lungs. ‘All that moaning and groaning—Varric’s bound to get the wrong impression.’

‘Bianca will just have to set him straight, then.’ Anders touched Hawke’s thigh and Hawke reached immediately to grab his hand. Calluses ran rough over Anders’s fingers, against his wrist; Anders forgot himself, how to heal, the same as he always did where Hawke was concerned.

All those lessons, learned grudgingly if at all, and they disappeared like Fade-mist in the full light of morning.

‘Just a bit of friendly healing before breakfast,’ Anders said softly. ‘All innocent as I come, I’m afraid.’

Hawke rubbed his thumb over Anders’s knuckles, also white, his palm trapped somewhere above Hawke’s knee. ‘Look,’ he began.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Of course,’ Hawke said. ‘My merry band of marauding, misinformed misfits.’

‘I like to think of them as madmen,’ Anders admitted.

‘That works just as well.’ Hawke cleared his throat, relinquishing his grip. He glanced at Anders just before he glanced to the door. ‘Why bother with the pretenses? Just let yourself in—pick the lock; there’s no privacy _here_.’

‘Sounds like you’re doing better,’ Varric said, door swinging open the moment Hawke was finished. ‘And you two are just where I left you. Hey, color me surprised—I never know what to look forward to when it comes to you, Hawke.’

‘We could hardly be expected to share a bed with Bianca,’ Anders said. He took his hand from Hawke’s leg before Varric could get any closer and form a tragically misguided opinion of the night’s events, whatever they were and especially whatever they weren’t. Anders may have been slightly off his mark back then but he wasn’t usually negligent toward his patients. He wanted that put down for posterity, if nothing else. ‘Do you know what that sort of thing can do for a woman’s reputation, Varric?’

‘Bianca’s not your typical woman, Blondie. I _think_ she can handle her _own_ reputation.’ Varric’s gaze passed from the ashes piled in the hearth to where Hawke was dressing, pulling on his dirty, bloodied garments from the night before. ‘You know, Hawke, they’ve invented this great system here in Wildervale—you put a bunch of hot water in a tub, and then you get _into_ that tub, and you bring a bar of soap with you… Tell me you’re following along here.’

‘I can’t very well walk back to my room without putting on clothes first,’ Hawke replied. He pulled something soft from where it was wedged between Anders’s back and the couch, setting his pauldrons haphazardly across his shoulders. Their eyes met before he continued, giving Anders a glimpse at the spark hidden deep in his gaze, one that hadn’t died alongside the previous night’s fire. ‘You know how all these unmarried women feel having me around. I’d cause a _riot_ here in the keep.’

‘That’s real responsible, Hawke.’ Varric’s attention followed suit, resting on Anders, as if all of a sudden everyone acknowledged that he alone held the secret tomes of their elders, all the ancient wisdoms of Thedas. ‘Anyway, setting aside the fact that this is my room, I _do_ have a reason for interrupting. If it were up to me, I’d let you sleep—’

‘We weren’t sleeping,’ Anders said, before realizing what that sounded like.

‘—Because _I_ was already awake,’ Hawke added, bravely wading in to wrestle the boot from Anders’s mouth.

‘I’m not asking,’ Varric said, settling into what Anders was coming to recognize as his favorite chair. ‘I learned a long time ago that if I want those details, I’m gonna have to make them up. And I respect that. But Blondie—I wanted to let you know we heard from Merrill.’

‘Merrill?’ Hawke’s fingers stilled at the buckle under his arm. ‘…How nostalgic of you, Varric. Last I heard she was setting up camp in Arlathan Forest.’

‘When she’s not sailing the Venefication Sea with her captain, of course,’ Varric agreed.

Anders tried to imagine the woman based on what he’d read and what he’d heard: a pirate’s broad hat perched on her head, lines of _vallaslin_ on her face, blood pouring forth from one hand and an enormous mirror in the other. But when he did that, she never became a proper person—or a proper elf—just a character, one more reminder that there were people he hadn’t met here and people he might never know beyond how Varric chose to describe them.

What surprised Anders wasn’t the disappointment—it was the regret. He wanted the chance to know Guard-Captain Aveline and ex-Captain Isabela, to sidle uncomfortably around Merrill and her blood magic, to have known Carver before the Deep Roads and the taint claimed his life. There were others that Anders would never get to know, too—kind Thrask and tragic Emeric and brave Lirene and lovely Leandra—and that knowledge ached, too, as though he’d missed out on something that had been meant for him all along.

His fingers twisted in the fabric over his knees, wrinkling his worn robes even further than the ruin he’d managed just by sleeping in them.

It was Hawke who broke the silence—Hawke who took notice of Anders’s anxieties made manifest through his hands and Varric’s telling reluctance to elaborate.

‘How _is_ our jewel of the northern coast?’ Hawke leaned over, checking the straps of his boots. ‘Hale and hearty—not cutting any more deals with any more demons, I hope?’

‘Hawke,’ Varric began.

‘They need her Eluvian,’ Anders blurted, releasing his skirts in a single, ill-timed, _swishing_ moment.

It wasn’t fair to make Varric say it—not after last night and not when Hawke had finally stopped looking at him like he was an intruder who’d been caught with both hands in the coffers. Even now, with space and the cold air between them, Anders didn’t feel the same invisible barrier set in place, an arcane shield keeping Hawke separate from everyone who tried to care about him.

Now Anders was the one who couldn’t meet Hawke’s eyes. He settled for staring at the mantle instead, white stone streaked with soot where Fenris had rested his hands after stoking the fire.

‘Care to elaborate?’ Hawke asked. ‘Because it’s all starting to sound like one of Varric’s stories.’

‘One of Varric’s _great_ stories,’ Varric corrected.

‘One of Varric’s great but _impractical_ stories,’ Hawke acquiesced.

Anders toed a half-circle in the rug, over the sharp lines of a triangle. ‘While you were gone, we… Keran arranged an _ambush,_ that sneaky fellow. He and Feynriel and Varric here—they all care about you a great deal, or _something_ like that, and they wanted to see whether we could figure out how I’d got here in the first place. And also whether there’d be any way for me to go back. I told them a lot of rubbish about everything that didn’t matter but they were too clever for me, and apparently this all happened— _probably_ —because I cut my finger on some spooky glass.’

‘Isn’t that always the case,’ Varric said.

‘An Eluvian.’ Hawke rolled the world like a bite of bitter ash on his tongue. Anders didn’t need to see his face in order to imagine the expression crossing it now, pinched at the bridge of his nose with deep furrows lining his brow. ‘…I thought I asked Merrill to destroy hers.’

‘This _may_ come as a shock to you, Hawke,’ Varric said, ‘but not everyone listens when you tell them to do something.’

‘Consider me shocked,’ Hawke agreed.

‘I’m not really sure how they work,’ Anders added, ‘but Merrill’s an expert, so I hear. Might just be like opening a door again, stepping through, waving farewell and heading…back. I hope I don’t have to cut my finger again; the whole thing reeks of blood magic, and aside from the obvious, which is _the whole thing reeks of blood magic_ , I always figured that sort of dirty dealing would also be painful. Forget about the deals with demons and bargaining with tricky arcane bastards—it _hurts_ to keep nicking yourself, and that can’t be right.’

Hawke leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. The position reminded Anders of the last time he’d left him and back then the sight hadn’t been a pleasant one: a broken man in need of healing rather than one who had a new jaunt in his step, a determined spark in his eye. Whether that was grim, gallows humor more than anything else was less important than knowing Hawke had found it, that Anders had helped him find it, that despite the march and the wounds and the tomorrows that might never come, there was still healing. And they did what they could while they could still do it, the same way some people thatched their rooftops while preparing for a rainy spring.

‘Seems like everything’s been solved, then,’ Hawke said.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Varric added.

‘Unless I’m horribly maimed and emotionally scarred by a blood ritual gone terribly wrong,’ Anders concluded.

‘Spend enough time with us, Blondie,’ Varric said, ‘and you’ll come to expect these things.’

That was the problem, Anders thought: he wouldn’t be able to spend enough time with them. It was possible he could spend another lifetime with them—however long it lasted, however short it ended up being—and have it still come up empty, since there was so much left to learn, so many people left to see. There was Rivain to think of, the Exalted March, Wildervale’s empty clinic, an apprentice and an enchanter who could do no more than administer potions and poultices and listen to their patients’ whining. There was Jamos and his boiling oil, Keran and his carvings, Varric and his crossbow, Fenris and his library of frowning and snorting.

There was Hawke, dust in his pauldrons and gray in his hair, an entire rebellion to lead and no one nearby to close the wounds he courted. As thankless as the task was, it still felt like there was someone missing, if only on a practical level.

Then again, there was the promise of fighting and losing, of battles not won but lost, of Wildervale falling to Starkhaven forces. There was tranquility, despair, life eked out barely in the rocky mountainside, twisted ankles and blisters and everything.

Anders knew there was a quantifiable difference between tranquility and blisters, that he couldn’t lump everything together under the same term _unpleasant_ and have done with it—just like he couldn’t lump everything good under _pleasant_ and pretend there weren’t shades and shadows there too. He glanced at Hawke, but Hawke was staring into the empty fireplace, rubbing his thumbs together. His back looked stiff and Anders didn’t know how to fix it, whether doing that would spoil him for tenderness he couldn’t allow himself to rely on.

 _I’m not going anywhere,_ Anders had said.

And Hawke had trusted him.

There was a quantifiable difference there as well, but it was starting to muddy itself, histories and stories coming together, Varric’s lies and Varric’s truths, all the past and all the future and all the present in between.

Anders had to pinch the bridge of his nose, pressing it between his thumb and his forefinger, still smelling of Hawke’s sweat and Fade-sparks and the tang of blood beneath the fingernails.

‘What’s the matter?’ Varric asked. ‘Don’t tell me the nug’s got _both_ your tongues.’

‘Yeugh,’ Anders said again.

‘We’ll just have to hope Merrill can make it, once all of Starkhaven marches on Wildervale,’ Hawke added.

‘Right.’ Anders licked his lips, as chapped as Hawke’s had been the night before. ‘That’s what I meant when I said: _yeugh._ ’

After that, it was just the three of them—the four of them, if they counted Bianca, who glinted meaningfully in the sunlight, trying to communicate with Anders in a series of pointed winks—with Varric leaning back in his chair and Hawke leaning forward, and Anders needing another long walk off the short ramparts, just for a breath of fresh air.

‘We won’t involve you in all this,’ Hawke said finally. ‘It isn’t your fight, Anders.’

‘He knows that already,’ Varric agreed. ‘We all knew that, right from the start.’

‘Maybe not the start.’ Hawke combed his fingers through his hair; it was the first time Anders had seen him care about his appearance in the face of other, more important matters, split nails dirty and stained with elfroot as they pushed through the hints and shocks of black-and-silver. ‘After all, what we _thought_ we knew back then was a little different. If I recall, it involved demons.’

‘Oh, it probably still does,’ Anders said. ‘Just not in the same capacity.’

‘I’ve got troops to prepare,’ Hawke said. Varric cleared his throat. ‘…And a bath to take so I don’t terrify them first.’

‘That’s better,’ Varric said. Something simple had changed, something Anders couldn’t place, that made Varric sit back easier than he should have—given the threat of battle on the horizon, the dire news Hawke and Fenris brought back with them from the Minanter River.

‘You stay here and we’ll figure out a way to get you _out_ of here,’ Hawke said, more the leader than before, just without the weariness such leadership brought on its shoulders. One night of good sleep—better than all the spirit healers this side of the Hundred Pillars. ‘Arlathan’s no Rivain, but at least it’s not Cumberland.’

‘Are those my only choices?’ Anders asked.

They were better than the usual odds.

Hawke did up the last of his straps, heading toward the door. Varric made no move to stop him, and Anders tried to stop him with his eyes. Neither tactic worked. Hawke had business to take care of, a place that meant so much more to him than a warm spot on someone else’s couch, in someone else’s arms. The door clicked shut, the latch falling into place, and Varric said, ‘Better not make it that obvious, Blondie.’

Anders bit his lower lip. ‘Varric,’ he said, ‘I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.’

*

There were other matters to occupy Anders’s attention that day—he needed a bath of his own, for starters, and Feynriel lent him a pair of his robes in that spooky, wordless way he had of making even a kind gesture seem untrustworthy. New robes were good, but Feynriel knowing how badly Anders wanted them was less good, a complicated balance of how he knew what he knew and what more he knew, all of it sending a prickly shiver down the length of Anders’s spine.

‘The Free Marches may have free _mages_ now,’ Feynriel said, passing over his spare set, ‘but that doesn’t mean they know the first thing about how to dress themselves.’

Anders tried to be grateful instead of resenting Feynriel for rooting around in his mind again. How else could a _somniari_ know how Anders felt about the cumbersome, padded wool that most mages north of Ferelden preferred? Even Karl, who had lovely broad shoulders, wasn’t able to pull off the awful pastels or the short, unfortunate jackets that went over-top. No one was flattered by the way they made everyone look like they had no waist and also no taste, no desire to look as free as they felt.

Anders smoothed his fingers over the dark green silks he had on loan, offset with gold threaded embroidery, and tried not to think too hard about how funny Feynriel would have looked in a set of black feather pauldrons.

It was a happy coincidence their tastes were similar; such things were still possible while Anders tried his best to believe in luck over fate. Yet even one more odd concurrence would tip the balance—and Anders was going to start thinking the Maker had a vested interest in his destiny.

Once clean, clad in the finest robes Minrathous had to offer a senior apprentice, Anders should have felt better about his situation. A good bath at Vigil’s Keep always did wonders for improving his mood, whether they’d been fighting darkspawn or flaming trees or blighted wolves, knee-deep in bog-shit in the Blackmarsh or knee-deep in grunt-slime in Kal’Hirol. But in Wildervale, Anders fidgeted, toying with the gleam of his earring as he combed his damp hair back from his face.

Something had worked its way beneath his skin, something the water couldn’t wash clean. He could feel it even now, more lively than the taint, wriggling inside him like a host of childer grubs fighting to break free of their fleshy cocoons.

‘Yeugh,’ Anders said again, this time to the empty room.

It would have helped to have Varric around or even Keran—someone to talk to or talk _at_ ; someone whose steady voice and trustworthy face might lure Anders into a state of security, however false or however fleeting. Without a reliable distraction from his peers, Anders’s mind was free to wander in Hawke’s direction, wondering whether he felt a little better after a good morning’s bath or whether he’d been lonely as he splashed around, looking for someone to slip their hands in beneath the hot water and scrub his bad back.

It was an idle fantasy, nothing more. The heat that lingered in Anders’s skin now was from the steam in the bathing chambers and not Hawke’s body leaned against his in the night. The former grew cooler with time rather than warmer and warmer still, and given Anders’s complexion, it was better not to get too flushed.

Still, he couldn’t help but trace the gold bracers wrapped around his arms above the elbow, wondering whether Hawke had ever seen his Anders in simple, Tevinter robes.

Not that it mattered—not even then. From what he’d read there hadn’t been much time for anyone to worry about how they looked.

The same was even truer now; though Starkhaven forces were still a long way off, Hawke had defenses to prepare and a keep to arm. He had more important things on his mind than a wayward mage, especially one who was planning to leave just as soon as he got the chance, whenever the fighting started or preferably before that point.

There was less work than usual in the infirmary that day, Anders’s pretty new robe-set hidden beneath Hawke’s old cloak, his clean cheeks and clean hair covered by the cowl. Most who could be out of bed were making arrangements for the coming battle, each with his or her own proper place, and the others—a broken leg, a swollen knee and a lingering chest-cough—barely carried Anders through to the afternoon. He took his lunch out to the courtyard, eating in the shadow of his great, bronze ghost, while sharp breezes carried the sound of Captain Jamos’s shouts all the way from the eastern watchtower.

By the gate, Anders thought he glimpsed Hawke, an uncharacteristic spring in his step as he directed a host of warriors along the wall.

‘You’re the healer, aren’t you?’ someone asked, interrupting Anders’s covert surveillance. ‘They said… They said he wears a hood.’

Anders touched the tip of his cowl in acknowledgment, turning to catch a glimpse of his new friend: a young man as thin as a garden stake, with an unfortunate crop of red hair and an even more unfortunate crop of red beard. He brought to mind a lone tomato growing on the vine; Anders had to bite his lip to keep from laughing outright or at least sharing this sentiment with the man in question, who wouldn’t have appreciated it.

‘That’s me,’ Anders said. ‘You can find me in the clinic most days—when there’s something for me to do there, anyway. I suppose I could start holding card games on the empty beds, but that seems in poor taste, doesn’t it?’

‘There’ll be work soon enough, if King Sebastian’s coming,’ the tomato replied. ‘If it’s anything like last time, there won’t be any beds free for you to play diamondback _on_.’

‘Cricket?’ another man demanded, calling down from the nearest window. ‘I sent you out for groceries before the shops get locked up— _not_ to stand about in the street gossiping.’

‘Cricket,’ Anders repeated.

Cricket shrugged. ‘Used to mind it. Don’t anymore.’ For his friend in the window, voice twice as big as his skinny body, he added, ‘I’ll get them, I’ll _get_ them—so stop your panicking!’

‘It might be different this time, you know,’ Anders said. He wondered if he was trying to comfort his companion as much as he was trying to comfort himself, but a dim acceptance had descended over the rest of the keep—happy as they were with their lives, they’d always known something like this was coming. Anders just had to do his best not to feel like the harbinger of change, Wildervale safe and peaceful until the faceless stranger came along—as though Anders turning up was all part of the plan. As though life itself even _followed_ plans like that, rather than accident after accident, some of them fitting a pattern while others didn’t.

Men tried to sort it all out, to give it reason, because the alternative—the accidents—were so much more frightening than random luck of any kind. That was why they had chants and chanters and chantries, Anders supposed, scuffing his booted toe along the dusty ground. There was dust in his sandwich, dust everywhere in Wildervale, matched by the smell of the oil in Jamos’s braziers, the sound of forges in the distance, of apprentices training their arcane shields alongside mages reminding themselves how to aim their fireballs.

‘Of course it’ll be different,’ Cricket said. ‘We’ve got a healer, don’t we?’

 _For now_ , Anders thought. It was a lucky thing Cricket couldn’t see his face beneath the cowl, nose hidden under the swoop of fabric, mouth tight and molars grinding.

‘What about those groceries?’ Anders asked. ‘Your friend seemed…particular about getting them on time.’

Cricket sighed, shaking his head, fond as someone only ever was when he’d known a man for years—every flaw and every fumble and all the good things hidden in the mistakes. ‘Walter thinks we’re still children,’ Cricket admitted, glancing off down one of the many roads, the one that led to the market district. A shuffle of staffs and robes crossed between the houses and Cricket rubbed dust from the corner of his eye. ‘He thinks if we just keep things the way we’re used to them, we won’t have to think about what’s to come. But we lived in _Darktown_ once. This isn’t exactly the worst we’ve seen.’

‘Me neither,’ Anders said.

‘We’ll make it through,’ Cricket said. ‘Sorry for taking up your time. Just…have an interest in healers, I suppose. It’s been a long time since Wildervale’s seen a good one—since _I’ve_ seen a good one.’ He leaned closer, close enough that Anders had to turn away so their faces wouldn’t meet—so his eyes wouldn’t be seen gleaming in the shadows of his cowl and the shadows of the statue. ‘Anders himself healed me, once. Put his hand right on my broken bone and fixed it up. And you know what else?’

‘What else?’ Anders asked.

Cricket’s voice was low, straightforward, not even reverent. It just was—part of a good memory, without embellishment or elaboration and with only a hint of pride. It was the closest to the truth Anders might ever get and even then there was no way of telling what was nostalgia and what was adventure and what was real. ‘It didn’t so much as feel special at the time,’ Cricket continued. ‘Didn’t know who he’d be _or_ what he’d do. Didn’t know whether I’d like him or hate him. To be honest, I wished he was someone else, a mage I used to know… But she always said to find help where you could and give whatever else you could get. Never thought I’d be living in a place with _him_ for a statue—that stories like mine would get me a free drink in some taprooms.’

‘Would things be better if he was still around?’ Anders asked, still drawing dwarven geometry with his foot, tracing the same oblong paths from Varric’s rug.

‘Don’t know,’ Cricket said. ‘But he isn’t, so that’s that.’

‘Cricket!’ Walter shouted from the window again.

‘Wish someone else was around to take care of the groceries sometimes, though,’ Cricket added. ‘I just hope we don’t meet again soon. Wish I had a few fireballs, though—take out someone _before_ they breach the wall.’

There was no way of knowing whether that would happen or not or if things were bound to get that bad. There was also no way of knowing if things would get better, either. Things would change and that was all they knew, all they’d ever know before the _hows_ and the _whys_ and the _whats_.

Cricket lifted a hand in farewell, lanky legs carrying him off down the street and around a sharp corner. Anders waved after him.

Then, he packed up the rest of his dusty sandwich and headed back into the keep, not making for the empty clinic—even if he could have helped out by tearing bandages and mixing elfroot potions—but for Varric’s room instead, warm fire and pillow collection and Bianca and all. The cowl was too heavy and Anders needed room to breathe somewhere dwarven musk overpowered Hawke’s blood and soap and sweat.

He also needed to find the last volume of _The Champion_ , to read all the way through the end, to make up his mind based on someone else’s storytelling. He had to think about why Varric had told the story in the first place and what it meant that he and Anders were friends—and who was meant to buy the thing, and who spent the most time poring through the pages.

Maybe it was as simple as getting it all out there. Maybe Varric just didn’t want to be the only one who’d felt what he’d felt, who’d seen what he’d seen.

And Anders supposed that was something they had in common, that they were all storytellers here, readers and writers alike, loquacious dwarves and lonely apostates and once-champions with bad knees. They shared dreams and they didn’t share dreams—and by the time Anders let himself into Varric’s empty room, all his thoughts were clear, even if he did have an enormous headache.

The room was empty, the books on the table. Anders didn’t sit on the couch or on the bed, away from the memories he had and the ones he didn’t, pulling up a stout chair and opening to the last chapter.

 _The Last Straw_ , it said, and even though Anders knew what happened after the ending, he had to read it for himself, the actions of a man he’d never be—or even worse, or even better, the actions of a man he’d always been.

*

‘Shit, Blondie,’ Varric said, fussing with the doorknob. He’d come in quietly but Anders was waiting for him, knees tucked up against his chest, the silks of Feynriel’s spare robes all but forgotten. That was the mark of a fine set of robes; it wasn’t constricting, didn’t pull at your elbows or your hips, and you moved through it the way some people moved through a dream, without limbs or angles or weight holding you back. ‘Wasn’t expecting to see you here. I even checked at the clinic—I was starting to get worried.’

‘I can’t leave,’ Anders said. ‘I mean—I’m not leaving.’

‘…Oookay,’ Varric replied, nice and slow, taking it easy into the room. Anders recognized the look. It was placating. It was just like the steady approach of the Warden Commander after the Joining when he was about to apologize—in his own way—for making you drink darkspawn blood, for not telling you about the aftertaste, or even warning you about the _during_ -taste. ‘Sounds good to me. I believe you. Wasn’t gonna kick you out, anyway—no use in both of us eating dinner alone.’

‘I meant that as a more…general, philosophical statement, actually,’ Anders said. ‘I’m not leaving now and I don’t plan on leaving ever. Well—maybe not _ever_. I still think we should all pack up and head for Rivain. And I’d like to meet this Isabela everyone’s going on about, of course, and probably see more of Thedas—can’t live without seeing Antiva at least once, am I right?—but for the time being, I mean. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Cricket’s very happy because we have a healer and so, you see, I’m staying.’

‘Oookay,’ Varric repeated. ‘I’ll do us both a favor and pretend any of that made sense.’

Anders smiled, sinking into the hard planes of a chair specifically crafted for a smaller body. ‘Thank you, Varric. You’re such a generous soul. I never knew how much I needed you.’

‘Most don’t,’ Varric said. ‘I like to creep up on ‘em at my own pace. And then, before you even know it—can’t live without me.’

‘I never saw it coming,’ Anders agreed. Despite the levity of his tone, how Varric was so kindly trying to distract him from the inevitable, Anders’s hands trembled and to steady them he gripped the carved wooden arms of the chair he’d borrowed. They’d been shaped by an expert craftsman, someone with a touch more talent than Keran and his best whittling knife.

Anders didn’t miss their temporary camp in the mountains, the cold winds and Hawke’s furs piled on the hard ground as a make-shift bed, Keran’s clumsy craftsmanship, chairs that hurt more than they helped. But now he found himself thinking about it with a certain fondness, Hawke’s clever eyes watchful of him even then.

 _Because he once thought you were a demon,_ Anders reminded himself. It had nothing to do with affection or longing, even if all wariness was a small part of that in the end. Still, time made memories by turns sweeter and sourer than they were, and this was one of the few things Anders could remember fondly, despite the truths he knew and the truths he’d lived.

‘That’s the general idea of an ambush.’ With Anders in his favorite chair, Varric opted to pace, marking the length of his favorite rug and doubling back and forth across it, the short, colorful fibers trampled beneath his boots. ‘Listen, Blondie—I know this is probably tough for you. You’re probably feeling a lot of _confusing_ things right now, and who could blame you? Honestly, you’ve been pretty impressive this whole time. I thought only Hawke could duck and weave like such a professional, so I’m surprised it took you this long to have your…whatever this is. Crisis of faith.’ He paused, then chuckled. ‘ _Crisis of Faith._ You know, I almost like that? It’d make a good title, at least for a chapter.’

‘I’m not having a crisis of faith,’ Anders said.

It was only a partial lie.

The maggots that had crept under his skin since sleeping with Hawke on the couch had all but stilled in their burrows. Gone were the wriggling anxieties that made it impossible for him to enjoy his dusty sandwich in peace. In its place was a different breed of panic, the sort Anders had experienced moments before drinking the darkspawn blood or marching into Drake’s Fall with the Warden Commander at his side. It was the same kind of fear that made it possible to do stupid things—but Anders only felt it whenever he’d already made up his mind to do the _right_ thing.

Whatever that was.

Varric sighed, sparing a glance Anders’s way before he turned to stare into the hearth. ‘Yeah. That’s what I was afraid of.’

‘Look,’ Anders continued, ignoring the way the chair creaked beneath him when he shifted forward, ‘I read the last book. _The Last Straw,_ rather.’ He shook his head when Varric opened his mouth, about to offer some explanation—or worse, an apology—for its contents. ‘And no, it’s not what you’re thinking. I haven’t had the error of my ways revealed to me and I’m not staying because I feel like I have to make up for another man’s mistakes. What he did—well, he did something, didn’t he? _Really_ …something. That’s all we’ll ever know. And why he did it and whether he should have done it and who else might have done it if not him—none of that matters. I can’t argue with _myself._ ’

‘Blondie…’ Varric cut in, gentle as a linen bandage winding over his skin. ‘It’s not your war.’

‘Well, no,’ Anders agreed.

The word war did manage to stop him in his tracks more than anything else, a concept worse than a mere siege at Vigil’s Keep and more personal than fighting legions of smelly, be-tentacled darkspawn. Men clashing with other men had different implications than men fighting tainted monsters. It was why Anders wished those darkspawn had never opened their mouths to speak with words they shared rather than chittering, meaningless whispers.

 _War_ meant fighting for more than his own freedom. It meant the freedom of all mages, their right to live in cities like Wildervale throughout Thedas, and the happy, tense autonomies they enjoyed, even in the cold, even in the dark.

‘But it will be, one day,’ Anders added quickly. ‘That is, if this Eluvian business hasn’t put an end to that. You never can tell with elves—they’re even trickier than dwarves, not to mention their sinister items of arcane power.’ Anders took a deep breath. There were always extenuating circumstances, always reasons why a decision could seem less like the right one if he thought about it long enough. Eluvians this, Exalted Marches that. They were part of the bigger picture, strong walls built to keep enemy forces out. The walls lasted, in various stages of crumbling decay, but it was important to remember the people who built them, who lived beside them, who needed them. Just because they were smaller didn’t mean they weren’t more important. Anders took another deep breath. It was still as simple as breathing because it always had been. ‘And…maybe I don’t want to be the sort of man who needs a spirit inside of him to do anything, all right? Justice is…charming enough, in a humorless, corpse-like, putrefying sort of way, but he doesn’t like my cat and I’m _not_ very good at sharing. Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘That you can’t condone or condemn?’ Varric asked. ‘That you can’t make a choice?’

‘Mostly that I can’t condemn, actually,’ Anders replied. It sounded a lot like taking a side, one he’d refused to take for so many years now that avoiding it was somehow easier than breathing. Not avoiding it made him feel as though he was about to _stop_ breathing. Yet somehow, he still was, not even turning purple, the sound loud in his ears but not enough to make Varric trot over and clap him on the back. ‘I mean, I don’t know if I’d do it myself, without all the… _everything_ , but that’s not what you’re doing here, is it? As long as I don’t have to _look_ like an abomination—they tend to come across so _lumpy_.’

‘He wasn’t all that lumpy.’ Varric didn’t miss a beat and the ease of his natural rhythm helped keep Anders in line. ‘That would’ve made it into the books for sure. Everybody loves a disfigured hero.’

‘Well,’ Anders said, ‘keep me on the walls with Jamos and his oil and you’ll have one of your own. Be sure to describe me as eloquently as you can _before_ I leap, burning, from the ramparts.’

‘Now that’d make for a scene.’ Varric finally came closer, all gold jewelry and gold hair, patting Anders on the shoulder. It was friendly, appreciative, a gesture that meant Anders had impressed him—and just like that, he had expectations. Anders shouldn’t have said anything, although he felt better now that he had. Unclean, but lighter. In many ways, it was just like vomiting. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing you’re sticking around.’

‘It’s all for you, secretly,’ Anders said. ‘I know how badly you’ve needed heroic inspiration.’

‘That’s the problem with writing about our lives these days, though.’ Varric pulled up a chair, both of them sitting by the fire; with Bianca close by and the books on the table, Anders’s pillow on the bed, it could have been called old times. Even if they weren’t times Anders had that much of, they were still comfortable—and not in the same way Feynriel’s borrowed robes were comfortable. It wasn’t someone else’s place he’s slid into, even if he was sitting in someone else’s chair. ‘Most of the time, it just isn’t believable.’

‘Like a duel with the arishok is _believable_ ,’ Anders replied. ‘And don’t get me started on the lyrium idol. It’s too coincidental, Varric. Too much happenstance and circumstance.’

Varric shrugged, propping up his feet and leaning back. A moment later, Anders did the same. ‘Sure, but it all tied back to the theme in the beginning pretty well, didn’t it? All those things Flemeth said, paraphrasing _more or less_ from the way Hawke told it—I mean, maybe he was distracted by all the darkspawn and the great big dragon and the tragedy of the moment, sure, but he’s got a good head for details. Why else do you think we made him the leader?’

‘Because Fenris isn’t a people person?’ Anders asked.

‘And because Hawke just looks so _handsome_ in all the outfits,’ Varric said.

Anders sighed, unable to disagree with that assessment, and Varric rolled his eyes, a dwarf of many depths and insights. Anders folded his hands over his stomach the same way Varric had, listening to the fire hit a pocket of sap in the hearth, snapping and burning blue before it resettled.

‘Speaking of Hawke,’ Varric said, ‘he’s not gonna be too happy you’re sticking around for something like this.’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ Anders replied, with more conviction than he felt.

What he meant was: _I’ll take care of Hawke._

Varric wasn’t the only teller of tall tales in Wildervale. Liars came in all shapes and sizes; an abundance of chest-hair wasn’t the only pre-requisite for the job and Anders didn’t have to be a rogue to sweet-talk a man who needed some sweet-talking. Healers carried on in that grand tradition daily, a combination of honesty and hopefulness that amounted to the same thing in the end—that Anders wasn’t going anywhere.

*


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes; Hawke and Anders spend one final night together.

Despite Anders’s determination, breath squared away solidly in his chest, all his words on the tip of his tongue, it amounted to nothing so much as wasted opportunity and disappearing chances.

Some things never changed.

What with all the commotion, preparation after preparation and Hawke in the center of it all, getting a moment alone with the man was even more impossible than getting Nathaniel Howe to crack a smile—and Anders wasn’t about to ambush Hawke in public, in the middle of instructing apprentices in force-mage spells, focus split at least three ways at all times.

Coming up on him like a shade, cloaked and demanding, tugging at one of his pauldrons to inform him _I’ve decided to stay_ and _I don’t care about the danger_ and _I’ll tell you I want to help, but in reality I’ll be just one more fool to worry about_ would be honest, more honest than Anders had ever been in his life and about as honest as he needed to be.

But honesty wasn’t always the best policy. Sometimes it came out selfishly; Anders had to wonder how much he wanted to be straightforward for its own sake and how much he wanted the comfort of knowing Hawke would look out for him more than the others—because of who he was and because of who he wasn’t, a promise made between two other people in private so many years ago.

Everyone had his own way of readying himself for battle, little details to distract men and women from the bigger ones. Just the same as bodies tried their best to heal themselves, to prevent further damage and further pain, the brain did its best to throw up an arcane shield whenever it could. You didn’t have to be a mage with a staff and a cowl to learn that tactic or to build that barrier—between yourself and an unclear and uncertain and probably unpleasant future.

So Anders settled in with the clinic instead, mixing fresh-water and fresh-elfroot for potions, stocking dried elfroot in between bandages for poultices, enchanting here and scrubbing there and sorting deep mushrooms everywhere, all part of the glamorous lifestyle of the spirit healer.

Hawke came in only to check on their progress; Anders looked up, a pile of bandages in his lap, the apprentice beside him chewing the tip of his tongue as he folded clean cotton. There was no opportunity Anders longed to have—nothing more than their eyes meeting once across the room, between the hustle and the bustle, despite everyone else’s business. Hawke simply nodded, checked the bandages, checked the potions, and said ‘Well done’ to everyone, just to keep up morale.

Anders couldn’t expect anything special even if everyone wanted to feel special in the face of oncoming slaughter. People—Anders included, Anders more than anyone—wanted little more than to know they’d be all right and deep down, they told themselves they would be.

Honesty, dishonesty. Taking precautions first; doing what they could to heal after.

Anders was tired by the time he returned to Hawke’s room but not so tired as Hawke, who never returned at all.

‘Enjoying this side of Wildervale?’ Varric asked, meeting him for breakfast the next morning. They ate swiftly and efficiently and joylessly, and Anders told himself—while the bread stuck in his throat—that at least they had the time to ready themselves. No one could say they failed for lack of trying.

The days passed, one after the next. Nerves mounted. Walls were fortified. The sound of Jamos’s shouting filtered down from the ramparts like thunderclaps rolling in.

At last, taking the chance to rub the sweat out of his hair and off his brow, to remove the cowl and remember who he was, Anders met Hawke in private, the door falling shut so softly behind him he had to purposefully scuff his boot on the ground in order to let Anders know he wasn’t alone.

‘Ah—there you are,’ Hawke said. ‘Just the man I wanted to see.’

‘Now _that’s_ something I don’t hear often enough,’ Anders replied.

‘Well, that’s probably because other people don’t actually _see_ you all that often,’ Hawke pointed out. ‘What with the cowl and all. _Just the bolt of fabric I wanted to see_ doesn’t have the same ring to it—so I’d imagine _that’s_ what puts people off.’

‘Mm,’ Anders said, locking his fingers together like the separate pieces of an Orlesian poplar puzzle-box. ‘When you put it like that, I suppose it all makes perfect sense. It isn’t as though you don’t have enough talents already—now you have to go and be _sensible_ on top of everything else.’

‘Don’t take the rubbish you read in Varric’s stories seriously,’ Hawke said. He settled on one end of the couch, stretching his long legs out in front of him with a nearly-imperceptible flinch. ‘I can’t _really_ turn a cartwheel while fending off an army of Tal-Vashoth—one or the other, even in my most limber years, but never both at the same time. I have my limits, the same as any other man.’

‘Why, Hawke.’ On impulse, Anders got off the couch, kneeling at Hawke’s side to unbuckle his greaves. His fingers lingered along the length of leather binding the steel to his calves; the muscle in Hawke’s leg twitched, but he didn’t reach out to swat Anders’s hands away. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to impress me.’

‘That all depends—did it work?’ Hawke asked. Close-to, Anders could see a streak of soot across his left cheek, and a small, dried cut above his eyebrow where someone’s fist of the Maker had slipped out of hand—or out of staff. His lips were dry but they no longer resembled a raw cut of meat the Warden Commander’s mabari had chewed to shreds, and there was a smile tucked away in the corner of his mouth, half-hidden in the shadows that settled over him like a second skin. The expression disappeared the moment Anders took notice of it, as though Hawke sensed his relief and felt it necessary to do everything in his power to perpetuate all difficulties. He could be just as contrary as Anders sometimes, or maybe more so. And he was competitive, on top of everything else. Then—because Anders was staring—Hawke cleared his throat. ‘I suppose that answers _that_ question. Well then. …Our scouts are telling me it’ll start tomorrow.’

Anders swallowed, hiding a wince behind the sharp, geometrical lines of Hawke’s right greave. He settled it on the rug before starting on the next, knee pressed to Hawke’s boot on the floor.

‘You really _are_ rusty at carrying on a conversation, aren’t you?’ Anders met Hawke’s gaze without trepidation, letting his hands run up the length of his calf to the ticklish hollow below his knee. ‘I doubt His Royal Highness would enjoy knowing you think of his Exalted March as an ‘it,’’ he added, speaking to distract Hawke from his roving hands.

Little touches were important to anyone, not just a healer. They reminded Anders of where he was and what he was doing—what he was getting instead of merely what he was giving up. The smell of dirt and metal clung to Hawke’s body, touched with a familiar tingle of arcane heat from his time in the practice yard. Someone had gone to the trouble to mend a tear in his trousers and Anders could still feel the stubborn stiffness in his knee, an ache that would never completely vanish.

All he could hope to do was stick around, to _be there_ for every flare-up, easing Hawke’s old wounds and hopefully preventing new ones. That had less to do with little touches and more to do with being a healer, but there was no one to say it couldn’t also be both.

‘…And you’ll be leaving tonight, if you want to make it out clean,’ Hawke added. He nudged the tip of his boot against the inside of Anders’s knee, close to his thigh. ‘Some of the younger apprentices are heading out too, before first light. I know you thought your days of riding in back of a covered wagon were over, but you’ll be in good company. Feynriel’s riding out with you, and I’m sure you’ll make friends for life…if you don’t all go mad in such close quarters first.’

‘Sounds delightful,’ Anders said.

‘Even more delightful than whatever party we’re going to have in Wildervale,’ Hawke agreed.

Anders saw the path he could take stretched out before him, like a flicker of pale ribbon wound around someone’s wrist as a favor, one slim road amidst the green plains of the Marches. He could almost feel the creak of the wagon beneath him, every bump on the road between Wildervale and the Arlathan Forest, how sore his ass would be when he got there and how serene Feynriel would look by comparison. Elves had that power to make even the most delicate of mages feel big and dirty, as sullen and hairy as the ox drawing the cart.

But clearer than the rest was Hawke before him, bits of mortar in his hair and brazier-oil dirtying his belt, the leather ruined but no less appealing to the eye for all its cracks and stains. Those were the details the pages missed. What came between was just as important as what came after.

Anders felt at ease simply by being in Hawke’s presence, but that was the sort of spell meant for others, the sort of spell no man could turn inward or use on himself.

Who was there to make Hawke comfortable at the end of a long day?

According to Varric—according to all the stories—he didn’t want anyone but Anders. And somehow, Anders was the person he’d found again, in a ditch just as dire as Darktown itself.

‘Before first light,’ Anders murmured, rising on his knees. His thighs ached from crouching, the small of his back from a hard day’s work. _And they’ll be leaving without me,_ he wanted to add, but the words swelled like a poultice on a sucking wound, sticking in his throat and robbing him of his moment.

‘Not for hours yet.’ Hawke glanced toward the darkened window, light kindled in his eyes the same way Nathaniel’s flint sparked for danger in the night. He looked as though he wanted to say more but he couldn’t find the moment, either; instead, he leaned forward, big hands catching Anders beneath his face, palms cupping the scruffy line of his jaw as he sank into a hungry kiss.

It was an awkward angle, Hawke not quite on the floor and Anders not quite on the couch, but neither of them fought to better their positions. Anders held to Hawke’s thighs like a drowning man clinging to the remnants of a driftwood raft, skin jumping under the warm touch of Hawke’s hands as they smoothed over his throat. The scent of elfroot lingered spicy on his finger—and Anders knew Hawke could smell it on him too, the evidence that maybe Anders didn’t think of Wildervale as a place he could leave behind so easily.

Heat throbbed in Anders’s cheeks, over the curves of his ears, deep in his chest. Hawke’s cracked knuckles brushed the back of his jaw, that soft spot vulnerable between his chin and his throat, and everything that had happened—conversations with Varric, dreams with Feynriel, angry looks shared by Fenris, evil plans enacted by Keran—muddied into one bright swirl of experience. Memories they’d made; memories they’d missed. Anders searched for the ogre in the room, the man he could have been and the man Hawke could have wanted, before he realized he was that man—not _at last_ but _always_.

The clasp at the top of Anders’s collar was too tight. An instant after the thought, Hawke undid it with his thumbs, careful not to tear the thread. He had good instincts, or he was secretly a blood mage, or they knew each other—just as Anders knew where all Hawke’s hurts were even in the places he didn’t have any scars to guide the way, bruises hidden below flesh, pain hidden below wanting.

His beard was rough and scratchy and Anders rubbed his face against it, hard enough for hair to catch on hair and teeth to bang on teeth. Hawke’s hands slid underneath the stiff edges of Anders’s collar to push it open, both of them weighed down by too many other things: pauldrons mostly, ticklish feathers and furs that made Hawke laugh and Anders laugh, both of them laughing together over something that wasn’t even funny.

‘Good thing Varric doesn’t have eyes _everywhere_ ,’ Hawke said, his eyes wrinkling at the corners not in a dark squint or a tight frown but old, happy relief. He touched his nose to Anders’s nose and both of them breathed as much air as they could, sharing it, waiting for the surge of need to start up again.

It did.

Anders rushed upward and Hawke did the same in reverse, leaning down to pull Anders up by his robes, the hooks and buckles in the belts at the small of his back. The straps were good for something, not just for show, which was what Anders always used to tell the Warden Commander—and Sigrun and Nathaniel and anyone else who’d listen, even Justice, who said the things reminded him of chains more than anything else. But those same trappings could be used for or against a man, to hold him down or to lever him up. Hawke’s fingers knotted in the weave, in the metal buckles and the tight silk straps, and Anders crawled into his lap without needing any further urging, without needing any further help.

‘Then again,’ Hawke added, ‘I wouldn’t put it past Varric to—’

‘I’m starting to think you have an unhealthy obsession with your dwarf,’ Anders said, kissing all the way down the side of Hawke’s cheek and jaw and black-bearded throat. There were spots of gray even stiffer than the rest; Anders kissed those, too. When he tasted oil on them he made a face and Hawke kissed that face, and Anders had never felt so ridiculous in his life.

He’d dangled out of the tower window, fourth floor up from the ground, swinging back and forth like a water-clock’s pendulum on a rope made of senior enchanters’ undergarments. Kissing Hawke held all the same principles: the knowledge that he could at any moment fall; the knowledge that he could at any moment suffer the consequences of being so brash, so bold, and so stupid.

But Hawke was there this time, someone else on the other side of the rope. When Anders swayed, Hawke steadied him, two hands braced at the small of his back, and Anders understood all those hinted feelings Varric never put into words—because he didn’t have the skill or maybe because he understood silence was reverence. Maybe because he wasn’t as insufferable a gossip as he pretended to be, part of the story he wrote, everyone playing the roles they knew other people would recognize.

‘You’re the one who spent the night with him,’ Hawke said. ‘You’ve no idea how that hurts a man’s confidence, how it eats away at his imagination. After all, I only did something like that once, and I was _very_ inebriated at the time—very _young_ , too, if you can believe it—and when you spend a Feastday at the Hanged Man, you come to expect these things. They just…happen.’

‘The Crown and Lion’s the same way,’ Anders agreed. ‘Only with less Varric and more Oghren.’

‘Dwarves,’ Hawke said. ‘Why is it _always_ dwarves with us?’

Anders didn’t have to wonder who else he talked to this way, this easily; he didn’t have to wonder who made these words, these wicked grins, these sloppy kisses possible. Instead, he shimmied his shoulders back, rolling them out and rolling his pauldrons free.

Hawke stared at his bare skin, safe from the shadows, and Anders asked him if he was still thinking about Varric.

‘Who’s Varric?’ Hawke asked. He pressed a kiss to Anders’s collar bone, following it all the way to his arm. Anders’s pulse raced beneath, the tickle of Hawke’s hair against bare skin, rough beard and soft, sweaty bangs.

‘Some short fellow, I think. See him around all the time in the keep, meddling in other people’s business at waist-level.’ Anders laced his fingers through Hawke’s hair at the back, fingertips cresting the crown of his head. He held Hawke in place and this wasn’t gallows humor but gallows kissing, the sort of act a man engaged in because he had nothing left to lose and no plans for regretting anything in the morning.

No time for regretting it, either.

The words couldn’t have been shared by anyone else, stupid conversation held breathless and unimportant and inappropriate between them. Anders fumbled at the laces in Hawke’s jerkin, undoing clasp after clasp after clasp, hissing in frustration.

‘Who _designed_ this?’ Anders asked. ‘I mean, _really_ —’

‘All the buckles make me look important,’ Hawke replied.

‘I hate them,’ Anders said. He fussed with a torn one, the gorget gone, Hawke’s throat bobbing and vulnerable, dusty fur pushed off him.

Then, strip by strip, it was stripped away. Anders surged against Hawke’s chest, mouth finding the taut pulse point where it hammered beneath Hawke’s skin. Knowing he was the reason for its pace made Anders flush with sudden heat, as if he was the one who’d been lit on fire instead of a brazier full of oil.

Anders was the reason Hawke was no longer a statue, stiff as mountain-stone and just as gray, beaten down by years of heavy rain and strong winds. Anders had spent so long thinking about the other man in the picture that it almost hadn’t occurred to him simply to be himself, neither metal nor memory—or that he was always the man in the picture, _just the man Hawke wanted to see_.

And he hadn’t even needed Justice to pull it off.

He should have moved onto the buttons lining Hawke’s tunic, small, silver obstacles in the way of the greater prize, concealing the expanse of Hawke’s hairy chest and his thick waist, scarred from the many years Anders wasn’t around to heal him. But instead Anders found himself clinging to Hawke’s neck, fingers digging in against the bare skin and the knot of tension just below the crook of his shoulder. Hawke breathed out a rumble of low pleasure and Anders could feel it, the vibration tickling his lips where he kissed and bit whatever exposed flesh Hawke allowed him to find.

It was second nature for Anders to kiss someone while slipping them free of a few necessary layers. Mental acuity—one of the most important talents for a mage to hone—meant juggling emotion with action or calming a racing pulse to cast a proper spell, one that didn’t hit the nearest ally. Long hours of practice at the Circle had made Anders an expert in getting other people out of their clothes without too much effort—a brass clasp here or a leather lace there; everyone’s robes fell to the floor eventually.

This time, he found his hands becoming tangled in Hawke instead, clinging to each solid slant and shape.

The tryst was simple. The way they slotted together, the way they came together, was simple. All the moments in between, the fumbles and the foibles, the way Anders’s hands shook and Hawke’s muscles twitched warm beneath them, served to enhance and enchant and enlighten—but also to get in the way.

Anders’s mind wasn’t clear; it felt like an old, tarnished mirror, streaked with grime and clouded over by age. Instead of his own reflection, all he could see was Hawke, silver threads winking in his hair, shoulders bared to the room and a wicked glint in his eyes.

Anders bit him, not a nibble but something that would leave a mark, round and red at the side of his throat. Hawke sucked in a breath, callused palms catching against the delicate weave of Anders’s silk skirts. His hands were at Anders’s thighs, rolling back his robes to expose his legs.

‘I’m normally much better at this,’ Anders murmured, tongue swiping over the bite-mark to soothe the raised skin. Little healing touches always; he appreciated it when no one remarked on them because he pointed them out to himself already.

‘Oh?’ Hawke’s hands stilled at the hem of Anders’s robes, thumbs swiping over his knees and sending a prickle of gooseflesh down his legs. It was too shadowy to see the blush that followed, but they both felt it. ‘Are you _normally_ a desire demon, then?’

‘That’s a sensitive subject,’ Anders said, as if Hawke needed the reminder. One of Hawke’s hands on his legs disappeared, traveling to his belt and the mysterious pouches on it. Anders watched but pretended he wasn’t, eyes lingering along the hard line of Hawke’s jaw—each clench and easing of tension obvious even beneath the fall of his beard.

He was so handsome that it made Anders feel the same way he did when he’d eaten too much bacon again, the same way he did when the plank in a cross-mountain bridge gave way below his boots, the same way he did when he expected another stone stair in the depths of Kal’Hirol only to step in something soft and squishy. He wondered how many hearts Hawke had broken after Anders was gone simply by not allowing anyone to piece his back together, then felt a snarl of growling jealousy and crushed the thought aside.

Hawke bowed his head against Anders’s, brow to brow, wrinkles of thought to wrinkles of thought. His hair tickled Anders’s skin, making the lines ease—something closer to a smile but also closer to nothing.

Then, Hawke kissed him, and before Anders’s eyes fell shut he caught a glimpse of Hawke’s hand leaving his belt, fingers glistening with oil. A spike of swift heat pulsed through his lower body, making his erection throb with desire—and protest at the lack of attention it’d received thus far. Anders told himself he’d come to realize there were some things more important than his dick; meeting Hawke on his level, doing things on his time, was one of them.

They were almost there.

Anders hadn’t been waiting that long, but for Hawke, it had been years of aching.

Hawke lifted Anders’s robes in back, one big hand sliding beneath the curve of his ass to hold him steady. Anders bit his lip, burying his face against Hawke’s throat, shaky breath tickling the hairs that grew beneath his collar bone. Hawke already knew what Anders liked—he had to, the particularities and peculiarities of the body shared no matter the age or the inhabitants of the flesh—and Anders’s thighs flexed in anticipation, pushing himself up before lowering himself down. Impatient; always impatient.

But everyone had to make the same tactical choice at some point or another, taking the high ground before giving it up, accepting the push of a callused finger still streaked with the day’s hard work. Anders hissed and felt Hawke’s hot breath on his skin from far enough back that he knew Hawke was watching.

He didn’t open his eyes.

There were some things he needed to see and some things Hawke needed to see; there were some things they both couldn’t hope to see. It was confusion itself, hot pleasure and something else even hotter, desire and comfort and hope. Anders managed the straps at Hawke’s waist better than he managed the others, accident or luck or lucky accident, touching the slants of thickened muscle that sloped down from his ribs over his belly, the shadows of his hips, the dark trail of hair.

‘Good thing I’m not still wearing Feynriel’s old robes,’ Anders murmured as Hawke’s oil-slicked fingers caught at a silky hem.

‘Good thing this outfit’s seen worse,’ Hawke agreed, oils spilled in his lap.

Their noises bumped, their mouths searching, Hawke’s hands gentle to the last and without the calluses Anders half-expected to feel. He was a mage, a strong one and a good one, with more sacrifice in the finger hooked between Anders’s legs than Anders had ever known. Yet all mages knew sacrifice instinctively, whether they made it for themselves or for others or because they had to—and the specter of Starkhaven rose high behind them, cast over the night-lights sprinkled through Wildervale.

It didn’t last. Thedas narrowed to a single point of pleasure, no longer a point of contention, Anders’s knees squeezing Hawke’s thighs. The blush against them echoed the blush on Hawke’s belly, the color in his cheeks Anders wouldn’t have expected from a man as colorless as Hawke had been the first time they’d met.

Anders opened his mouth to tell Hawke he wasn’t going anywhere—but Hawke wouldn’t have believed him and the words didn’t come out anyway. He breathed Hawke’s breath instead while Hawke breathed his, until there was no breath left and no space between them.

Hawke didn’t say he’d missed him or this or anything. He eased Anders’s hips forward and Anders went with him, elbows braced on his shoulders, fingers laced in the air behind Hawke’s. The couch groaned, which was how Anders felt, a hiccup of air bubbling from the center of his chest, from a deep pocket held tight by his lungs.

When he let it go, Hawke did the same.

He had to look up to see Anders’s face, but he didn’t seem to mind the position.

‘I hope this isn’t part of the group initiation,’ Anders said, because he couldn’t help himself, because he wanted Hawke to smile, kissing the corner of his mouth to find the expression and taste it. Hawke laughed again, shaking his head, mumbling something about Varric and Fenris and _Maker no_ , before they finally came together, Ander’s ass against Hawke’s dick. Anders felt just the head pushing against the curve of ready flesh, hair tickling the length of his balls, before he finally dropped, and felt everything.

*

The fire was out, Anders’s thighs sticky, his robes tangled around his waist. One of the belt buckles had popped loose, frayed thread dangling a heavy clasp, trapped between his ass and Hawke’s thigh and the cushions of the couch. Anders trailed his fingers down Hawke’s chest, Hawke’s eyes open—they were bare slits, shadowed heavy with dark lashes, but light flashed beneath that hooded darkness, keen and gold.

Every time Anders met that look, low and lazy as it was, he felt a hot pulse to the back of his spine straight through his belly, Warden stamina and Warden appetite and human nerves bristling—like a kitten when you rubbed its fur the wrong way and it liked the feeling despite itself, liked it almost too much.

Hawke’s palm rested against one of Anders’s knees. He pulled him close, arms around his waist, making the whole belt situation worse, and Anders allowed himself to fall into the embrace, even if falling upward was harder than falling down.

It was good. It was better than good, so fine and so necessary that it hurt, the pocket of air in Anders’s chest swelling all over again. He didn’t know what it was, promise or purpose, but he’d wanted it to go away, chased out by the exhaustion that came after so much pleasure.

He’d thought he’d spent everything but now, he wasn’t sure.

‘Come to bed,’ Hawke said, voice rumbling against Anders’s temple. The phrase sounded fond, weary and old—older than Hawke was and older than the gray in his beard. Even if it wasn’t meant for someone else, it was something he must have told someone countless times before, while that someone insisted on working on the manifesto Anders had read so much about. And Varric—for the sake of his readers—had kept its content under wraps, not bothering to go into all the boring details, bless his craggy thaig soul.

Anders hitched his hips forward, too comfortable to move, too uncomfortable _not_ to move. A bed sounded promising—a real one that they shared, not a couch with extra pillows or a pile of tickly furs—but something about the idea made him shy.

Or maybe that was just the prospect of having to leave it in the morning, ushering a few elvhen apprentices out of the Keep while Starkhaven forces amassed to the east, the chill winds of dark banishing the warmth their bodies left behind.

Talk about not wanting to pull back the covers.

‘ _You_ want to go to _bed_?’ Anders pillowed his head against Hawke’s chest. But even the weight of Anders’s thick skull couldn’t keep him from moving, slipping an arm around Anders’s waist, holding him close and steady as he sat. ‘Of all the things I’ve been forced to believe in my time… I never thought I’d live to see the day. I wasn’t aware you even knew what a bed was _for._ And considering what we just did on this couch, I’m still not convinced I was mistaken. You must have something against them—but what did beds ever do to you?’

‘Heat of the moment,’ Hawke said. He groaned when he stood, leaning against Anders even as he held him up. His shirt was still hanging open, fabric puckered where Anders had managed to undo half the buttons. A few of them were torn just like Anders’s buckles, casualties that wouldn’t matter in ten days, much less ten years. ‘I don’t recall you complaining at the time.’

‘They _could_ have been cries of misery,’ Anders replied. He slipped his hand in beneath Hawke’s shirt, palm steady against the bristling hairs, skin warm and sweaty on skin as they stumbled toward the bed. Anders didn’t feel drunk, not on the Crown and Lion brew or rich Rivaini brandy or anything Oghren kept in his personal skein to lend him strength in the face of arcane horrors and blighted atrocities. It was just the taste of someone else’s mouth, the jelly-wiggle of his legs, tight muscles starting to ease up—and a body so thoroughly rocked by its activities it no longer remembered how to move again. It was all used up, and so were they, but still they had to keep moving. There was always more to give. ‘Deep, appreciative moans of unhappiness? Wondering why we were on the couch as I gasped for breath in the throes of ecstasy? There’s a bed right there—I bet you’re hurting its feelings.’

Hawke’s brows disappeared beneath the dark fall of his hair. ‘There were throes?’

‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Anders said. It took only a minor exertion of force, shifting his weight forward with purpose to knock Hawke over, to topple them both onto him onto the soft, cool mattress, Anders above and Hawke below.

It sagged comfortably beneath their collective weight, woven blankets wrinkling under Hawke’s back where he landed, no sign of furs anywhere—or rogue pillows.

The bed was practical and practically made. There were no canopies or brocades or flourishes but the mattress was just firm enough, with just enough give.

‘Oof.’ Hawke rolled with practiced instinct, bracing his hands on either side of Anders’s head before he could move. There was heat in his gaze and a deep fatigue beneath it that made Anders brush his fingers over the corner of Hawke’s mouth, thumb resting against the silver patch in his beard. Hawke quirked his lips to kiss it and Anders felt a flash of possessiveness run through him like heat-lightning, a chain reaction that tingled and hurt below his skin.

Hawke was his to look after, not Varric’s—not Fenris’s, not Keran’s, and not Feynriel’s.

It wasn’t just for him that Anders had to stay. But it was because of him that Anders knew he couldn’t leave.

‘Best to get some sleep,’ Hawke said, apparently unaware or unappreciative of the personal hypocrisy in that statement. ‘You’ve got that date with the wagon tomorrow. Wouldn’t want you to be late.’

‘What makes you think I can’t sleep in the wagon?’ Anders was too sated to affect a proper pout. That didn’t stop him from trying—it never had—and Hawke blinked down at him, tracing the shape of his mouth with a sticky thumb. Anders kissed that too.

He tried not to think about mirror images and for a brief, lovely moment, it worked.

‘Feynriel’s driving,’ Hawke said. There was a sliver of humor hidden at the very heart of his words, a huff of amusement trapped in his sigh and deeper in his chest. ‘If you’ve never been land-sick before, you’re in for a treat in the morning.’

They struggled under the covers; Anders went limp even if he could still hear his heartbeat pounding like a flight of apprentice’s footsteps over the wall, mages running drills for Captain Jamos. Hawke reached for him and Anders came along easily, resting his head on Hawke’s shoulder, slipping his right leg between Hawke’s thighs where they spread. When he closed his eyes, he could hear Hawke’s pulse, more soothing than the thrum of the calling Fade.

Anders fought to resurface, knowing it was his last chance to speak before morning.

‘Hawke,’ he began, ‘this might sound strange, and it’s certainly not the right time for it, but we need to talk. I mean, I have something to tell you and I don’t think it should wait until morning.’

Anders paused. There was no reply. Instead, he shifted in the accompanying silence, setting his chin against Hawke’s chest, trying to look him in the eye.

He was met with only the shadowy flutter of Hawke’s lashes, the soft, even tones of his breathing.

Hawke had finally fallen asleep—exactly when Anders needed him to be awake.

It was better not to tell him that; it was the sort of confirmation, the sort of proof that kept a man running until he was all run out.

‘Oh, _fine_.’ Anders patted his chest, lowering his voice, settling his cheek back on the hard curve of Hawke’s shoulder. ‘Only Varric gets to write in epic scenes of romantic unburdening. _I_ see how it is.’ He pressed his hand against Hawke’s rib-cage, lower and lower, tracing the thick band of a scar he hadn’t been there to prevent or ease. He wanted to kiss it but he was so high up and it was so far down, Hawke’s chest hair tickling the side of his cheek. It didn’t make for a good pillow, no pastel colors, no soft Anderfels brocade, too much rising and falling and not enough squishy stillness, but that was what Anders had. For once what he had was what he wanted. ‘We’ll just have see how _he_ likes having a twist thrown in at the eleventh hour, then. It serves him right.’

Muttering to himself, lying atop the man he’d traveled over land and time to be with, Anders drifted off on his last night as a stranger in Wildervale.

*


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The healer is revealed.

Urgent hands shook him awake, making Anders aware of two things: one, the bed was cold; and two, he’d neglected to fix his robes where Hawke had left them open the night before.

‘Hawke,’ Anders said. He hoped it was Hawke. He didn’t want it to be Fenris; he wouldn’t have been happy if it was Keran, either. Varric would be all right because Varric would find out eventually, but answering questions and dealing with knowing looks this early in the morning, especially at the dawn of dire battle, wasn’t something Anders felt prepared for yet. Not with his robes open, a few of the buckles twisted, one of them poking meanly into his ribs when he rolled over onto his back.

‘I’ve never been mistaken for _him_ before,’ Feynriel’s voice said. Anders opened one eye, prepared to squint into the light, but it was still mostly dark in the room, only the barest hints of pre-sunlight streaking gray in the distance, somewhere far beyond the eastern window. Feynriel was all shadows, like a vision from the Fade, and Anders wrinkled his nose suspiciously as he sat. He could feel the tug and protest of happy muscles whenever he moved, especially from parts of his body that had gone unmentioned and unnoticed for too long—ever since he drank darkspawn blood and his life got freakish in the bad way rather than the best one. ‘No, Anders,’ Feynriel’s voice added, Feynriel himself ducking low into sight. ‘This isn’t a dream.’

‘Or a nightmare?’ Anders asked.

With this crowd, a man could never be too certain.

Feynriel was somewhere between Keran and Fenris on the list of people Anders wanted to see this early in the morning—or didn’t want to see—in this state of undress, in this bedroom, in this bed. At least it wasn’t Alain; the man had a pained look about him already and the last thing he needed to confront was the mostly-naked ghost of his town hero, curled up like a kitten in his leader’s bed.

Life was strange and unfair for everyone, Anders reminded himself. Even for strangers; even for _somniari_. Even for dwarves, and even for champions. Anders scrubbed at the sleep in his eye and Feynriel did the right thing, the decent thing, looking away and giving him time to buckle up.

He didn’t mention it the way Varric would have, though there was something shared in the slyness of their little coughs, Feynriel’s pressed into the circle of his hand.

Anders told himself it didn’t matter what they thought about him. Soon, Feynriel would be disappearing into the wilds of the Free Marches, taking the long way around to Tantervale, crossing the Minanter River and keeping to the range of the Hundred Pillars to avoid Starkhaven, all on his way to the Arlathan Forest to meet with Merrill. Feynriel would drive the ox-cart the same as any half-elf, half-human and full-mage would—which was to say, poorly—and the children in the back would sleep all huddled together, protected by the wall of defense of Wildervale even if they didn’t know it yet.

Anders tucked pouching, wrinkled fabric underneath the sleek slide of his belt, tying it loosely, fingers passing briefly over the bruises and bites on his skin. Each one reminded him of something wonderful, something he’d left behind that wasn’t chasing him for once—something he’d rather be chasing, something he refused to let go of. He slid belt through belt and did up clasp after clasp and when he was finished, his shoulders still felt naked without his pauldrons.

‘This sort of thing happens all the time here, does it?’ Anders asked. It was quiet in the room. The sink in the bed at his side where Hawke had been was already cool, just the barest of shadows to prove he was ever there at all, a few dark hairs caught stark against the pillowcase. He wasn’t there anymore but Anders still was—and he was determined to make that mean something.

‘Every now and then,’ Feynriel replied with a graceful shrug. Anders’s socked feet hit the cold floor before he padded across the warmer rug, finding his pauldrons left neatly on the couch, folded there to wait for him by someone else’s thoughtful touch. He strapped them on. Feynriel coughed again, just as politely, maybe even more so. ‘You…get used to it.’

Anders hopped into one boot, struggling with the laces on the other. ‘So they tell me.’

‘Are you ready?’ Feynriel asked after Anders righted a vase on a table, one he’d knocked over while trying to balance. It was also one of the few personal touches in a room that needed Hawke in it in order to mean anything more than a collection of empty spaces and abandoned furniture.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Anders said. ‘Also: define ready.’

Feynriel opened the door instead. Maybe that _was_ his definition.

Anders grabbed his cloak—Hawke’s cloak, also without Hawke in it—and covered his face, but the halls were empty, everyone defining ready for themselves without looking to others to do it for them. Anders thought he could hear shouting from down in the courtyard.

‘Hm,’ Feynriel said.

That was it for conversation; after that, Anders was greeted by only the swish of his fine Perivantium silks, skirts Anders would have liked to wear in another lifetime, one in which he _didn’t_ have to think about volleys of righteous arrows being loosed his way.

At least it wasn’t tentacles.

Even those might have been preferable here, an enemy that made sense as opposed to an enemy that was less obvious, no streaks of slime and no squelch of suckers to signal who to hate, and how, and why. Anders told himself to remember this one for Varric—he’d like the twist, the day a man saw the importance of darkspawn in a world where other hatred focused itself less clearly and more dangerously because it lacked clarity.

A man knew when to unleash himself if a hurlock grunt was snarling in his face, threatening his family, waving a weapon at his dog—but this was a different war, a different kind of story.

Feynriel’s feet were all but silent on the stones below. They went down, and down, and down each narrow staircase, until they came out in the back of the keep, toward that end of the wall.

‘We’ll be surrounded soon,’ Feynriel said. ‘It was nice to meet you, Anders. …Again. While it lasted.’

Anders blinked. It took him a moment to understand and when he did, he wished he hadn’t. ‘Are you sure you’re not a blood mage?’ he asked.

‘Understanding people isn’t all slitting your wrists and dancing naked in the moonlight,’ Feynriel replied. ‘ _He_ was always too stubborn for his own good too.’

‘That’s my keen sense of personal honor you’re talking about,’ Anders said. ‘At least…I think it is. Sometimes it’s pure accident. …Like tripping and falling when you’ve meant to run, and everyone _thinks_ you’re making a stand instead.’

Feynriel turned away, feeling the edge of the pointed arch above an old wooden door, tucked away into the beaten rock, so small as to go unnoticed. Its iron handle creaked when he lifted it and he turned back to Anders just once, silvered hair and blue eyes winking in the morning sun, as bright as the jewels Captain Jamos wore around his throat. If it hadn’t been for the tug of sad humor at the corner of his mouth—spirits never smiled so sorrowfully; only men knew wistfulness, while demons could embody but didn’t _understand_ regret—Anders would’ve taken him for an apparition from the Fade, a vision crafted from pale corn silk and wood-violets.

The sight almost convinced him to get into the cart—sitting next to Feynriel all the way to Arlathan just to plumb the depths of his Fade-hidden secrets.

But there were men shouting in the distance. Anders could hear the sharp twang of bowstrings loosing their volleys, coupled with the foreboding crackle of lightning rippling across the sky. It wasn’t the calm before the storm but the rumble just after the calm, the first hint that the clouds were about to break.

Mages and non-mages, operating together. If anything, curiosity of how it all worked would keep him in Wildervale, the same curiosity that got Pounce’s whiskers singed or trampled the Crown and Lion’s ferret.

Besides, if Anders left—in that place after everything began but before everything ended—then Varric would write someone else in as the hero of the story.

After the past week, Anders had spent enough time reading about the exploits of other people. It was time to write his own, even without the promise of a satisfactory conclusion.

‘Take care of Hawke,’ Feynriel said. ‘I’ll know if you don’t.’

‘Funny,’ Anders replied, ignoring the chill that gripped his spine, a shade’s touch slipping beneath his skin. He straightened his robes, fingers lingering over the buckle Hawke had torn in his rush to get Anders out of them. ‘Here I was hoping _Hawke_ would be the one to take care of _me._ ’

Feynriel hid his laugh against the palm of his hand, ducking out through the back door before he squandered more time, precious as it was, the one thing a mage couldn’t alter or grow no matter how powerful he became. Anders could feel his absence, could appreciate the loss, even though he hadn’t liked Feynriel that much to begin with and there was no reason to be anything but grateful that he was disappearing now. He could haunt someone else’s dreams—someone who deserved it, if life was fair, though it usually wasn’t.

Anyway, there’d be time enough for them to get to know each other later, if the siege in Wildervale went well.

In the distance, something shuddered, a rolling boom that made Anders’s teeth rattle in his head with the same ferocity as the door rattled in the wall. Starkhaven forces were already at the gates. And someone—no doubt the king himself—had thought to bring a battering ram.

When Anders considered his experiences at Vigil’s Keep, he couldn’t help but wonder if his luck in sieges had already run out—if he’d brought down the odds of _this_ keep making it through just by being there. There were no more _whens_ , only an abundance of _ifs_ , and Anders didn’t deal well in uncertainties. He preferred to lend his aid to battles that had already been halfway won, safely ensconced behind dwarven-made walls in a nigh-impenetrable keep.

Since the only dwarf Anders had seen in these parts was Varric—who’d expressed more interest in collecting rugs than in stone masonry—Anders had to assume the walls of Wildervale were more vulnerable to being breached.

Now that he was here—now that Feynriel had gone and with him, Anders’s last chance for escape—Anders felt an anxious twist of fire in his belly, a welcome heat coupled with unwelcome nerves. The two went hand in hand; he couldn’t have one without the other.

The thump of the battering ram against the doors threw his heartbeat out of rhythm, pounding in his ears and dogging his footsteps. He drew the hood of Hawke’s cloak over his head once more to cross the open courtyard, sticking to the shadows whenever he came across a pocket of warriors—ranged as a second line of defense if the mages and the shielded archers on the watchtowers fell.

As he drew closer to the eastern wall, Anders could hear the indistinct shouts from the other side, a detail that hadn’t been shared by the siege at Vigil’s Keep. Fighting darkspawn—the kind that didn’t talk—meant aiming your fireballs at the snarling and growling, the inhuman yelps and guttural cries of menace made manifest. Now, there were men on both sides of the battle—men who fought for their freedom against the men who fought for the chantry’s order, for peace and _tranquility_ in the Free Marches and beyond.

It was Anders who’d started this fight and Anders who’d let mages all over Thedas know they had a choice beyond fear, beyond keeping to the old ways, beyond accepting things as they’d ever been. He’d said something about peace itself, something Varric improved on for posterity—but just as there was a time and a place for sitting back in a taproom, feet up, friendly stranger on your lap and friendly whiskey in your belly, there was a time and place for other things, most of them less pleasant.

Anders had a place here, in this battle.

That place wasn’t the clinic.

There was a statue of him standing bronze and tall in the courtyard. Someone—a lot of someones—had lit white candles at its base, and firelight sharpened the shadows in his boots. Above it all, his mouth was firm, his brow steady, his palm open; even the lines on his hands were represented there, the ones Anders rubbed now, alive with arcane energy.

No one had thought to make the statue of Anders sitting in the infirmary, healing the wounded while he kept his face hidden from the very men and women who fought for his cause.

Over the clatter of plate armor and the rhythmic pounding of Sebastian’s battering ram, Anders heard Captain Jamos call for the braziers.

It was the sort of detail Varric would have included. But Varric’s stories had kept Anders alive—in more ways than one. Anders’s absence, his death, that unspoken tragedy no one had ever properly explained, might have had more to do with Varric’s inability to write those stories now, a loss he hadn’t predicted and one he couldn’t change.

‘You have so many good ideas,’ Anders muttered, taking the steps up to the ramparts two by each, his boots slapping the stone, too quiet a sound to echo between the walls. No one was watching a lone, dark-hooded shadow make its way up to Jamos and his guarded braziers. ‘A rope made of smalls—there’s no way _that_ might break. Join the Grey Wardens? What a lovely jaunt. Snoop around in an abandoned thaig—oh _yes_ , Anders, why not, and touch all the ancient artifacts you can find while you’re at it. Get a chance to leave the city in siege—just what you’ve always wanted—but no, no, don’t take it, _stay_ for a while. When all this is over you might as well just light yourself on fire. _There’s_ a good man.’

Anders crested the ramparts where the archers were ranged, guarded by mages and bright spheres of arcane light, shields drawn together—some made of energy from the Fade, while others of beaten silverite were held just as steady.

Light glinted off metal with a different refraction than it was absorbed by mage barriers, but the purpose of each was the same, each in its own way.

The people of Wildervale had so much to protect.

Down below, spread out through the emptied city, the forces of Starkhaven were waiting. Anders shook his head at the sight, marveling at it just long enough to realize how precise it was, how exactly like the rulebooks, all that bother about legions and phalanxes. Polished silverite glistened and glimmered, each proud helm, each drawn blade, protecting the archers as they kneeled at the ready.

There was someone riding an Orlesian warhorse, the only mounted fighter there. His armor was white.

He had to be the choir boy.

Some leaders refused to draw attention to themselves in battle while others chose to be a figurehead, not as strong or unshakeable as a statue, but purposefully as _shiny_. Anders didn’t have armor—a fact he regretted even now—and the dark folds of the cloak he wore were meant more for hiding than for showing off.

Anders slipped unnoticed behind Jamos, holding a torch in one hand, standing beside the first brazier. He had two men with him, neither of them with staffs.

‘Ready when you are, ser,’ Anders whispered.

Jamos blinked. Anders relieved him of his torch. It flickered once above the heavy burner, full of slick, magicked oil already bubbling, then fell into the mess, both of them made for this, made to ignite.

They all had to cover their faces from the roar of heat followed by the roar of attention, the clank of metal, all heads turning, all eyes fixed on the north-eastern watch. Anders took the opportunity to take off his cloak, to adjust his pauldrons, to hold up his hand the same way the statue had. His staff was in the other, bracing him against the stone walk beneath, and that was right—though he felt small, maybe too small as he came to the wall’s edge, light crackling behind him.

He thought about Oghren and the Warden-Commander, two of the loudest people he knew. He thought about Justice, the way his voice echoed from the deepest part of someone else’s chest, from the deepest part of the Fade beneath. He thought about how stupid he was some more and how big his nose felt, like a target right there in the center of his face. He thought about Varric’s words and his own actions and Hawke’s bed, Cricket and Walter, the elvhen children in Feynriel’s wagon, Keran’s crafts, the blood on Fenris’s armor, and the smell of Hawke’s skin.

All he had was a small explosion, nothing meant to harm, just meant for attention. It wasn’t the same as the last he’d ignited, in a manner of speaking; he just had to hope it would recall what it needed to begin.

‘I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation,’ Anders said. It was loud enough. His own voice echoed over the courtyard below, over the soldiers, from sun-shield to sun-shield, and he asked himself, _Is that what I really sound like?_ before he licked his lips and continued. ‘Why do you threaten it?’

Silence followed. Anders should have expected that. It wasn’t as though there was going to be a standing ovation. There was probably going to be a volley of arrows, no time for a volley of whispers, a trained army ready to take down the one face they hadn’t been expecting. He heard a few gasps from his own side; it might have had more to do with his brazen—or was that brazier?—actions than anything else.

He couldn’t know. He couldn’t hope. It was out of his hands now. He heard a scuffle of boots on stone, followed by a shout of rage from down below, coming from the direction of the armored man on horseback.

Something hit Anders’s side. Arcane shields went up. Panic sounded and orders were called and the others braziers were lit, one by one.

Anders smelled the oil; he also smelled Hawke’s skin. He wasn’t making it up this time, a final thought before death, and Hawke dragged him down, shield held high, as the first wave of arrows soared in above them.

‘You have so many _good ideas_ ,’ Hawke hissed, bolt-heads pinging off the arcane barrier.

‘I tell myself the same thing often,’ Anders replied, which was true enough.

‘But I _won’t_ lose you to Sebastian.’ Hawke was covering him now with his own body. Jamos was shouting and the ground was shaking and braziers were being brought to the wall’s edge, being poured out onto the men below. ‘Not again, you _blighted idiot_ —’

‘I don’t like forests, you see,’ Anders whispered—against Hawke’s cold metal gorget and a clump of dusty fur, rather than against his throat. ‘All that nature—we don’t get along.’

Sebastian’s men were starting to shout, sharp cries to meet Jamos’s burning oil each time it hit the mark. But Hawke was already moving, dragging Anders with him down the length of the wall and toward the nearest staircase. He still moved quickly—more quickly than Anders would have believed, having been privy to all of his sore muscles, his stiff joints and his bad knee. Whether it was his speed or his charisma or a combination of both, when he ran—a fist knotted in Anders’s robes—it was like being caught in an ocean current, with Anders unable to pull against the momentum carrying him to shore.

Heat shimmered and rippled in the air as they made their way down the stout stone steps, toward safety that was relative—in name only.

The mages in the keep were working together, building a net of wicked flame and blue-white lightning; one created a fireball and the next added power to it, spells rotating down the line until they’d built Wildervale a living barrier. Embers tumbled from their hands, glittering through the air like falling stars.

Through the haze of fire and crackling storm-light, Anders could see where Sebastian’s forces had shattered the door; the metal-tipped end of the battering ram was angled toward the sky where it had splintered through the thick wood, but while it was clear the mages had prepared a secondary defense pattern, only a handful of soldiers were making it through.

Anders had seen Sebastian’s forces for himself. They outnumbered Wildervale’s residents by at least three to one, and that was counting the apprentices who’d left—and the civilians who’d stayed. Anders wondered whether Cricket was here somewhere, patchy red beard hidden beneath a militiaman’s helmet, or whether he was crouched behind a locked door with Walter, knowing the warriors and mages could fight only so long as there was someone there to pick up the pieces afterward.

But even if there were a few extra carpenters and cooks on the battlefield today, that didn’t explain why the army from Starkhaven was faltering at the last. Anders was no expert but he had to assume the defenses they’d met had been expected, even anticipated, planned for and planned against.

So there had to be something else, a different shield of a different make, holding them back—keeping them at arm’s length.

The shouting from the wall was still audible and punctuated by meaningful commands, still clear over the crackle of lightning and fireballs that scattered the bare forces penetrating the keep.

The mages of Wildervale’s defense had been well-trained. They kept their distance, letting the fury of their spells stand between their unarmored bodies and the Starkhaven soldiers—armed with broadswords that could cleave a man’s body from crown to balls.

Furious as the spells were, powerful and bright, the sight wasn’t any more extraordinary than the mages Anders had known, the mages that soldiers were trained to fear and trained to fight.

And it still didn’t explain why so few took advantage of the breach in the door.

Hawke’s clutch had slipped from the front of Anders’s robes but he refused to let go, his fingers wrapped tight around Anders’s wrist: staff in one hand, Anders in the other. He turned only once, not the sort of man to look over his shoulder, keen-eyed enough to note the disparity and to harbor his own confusion at what he saw.

The number of men breaking through would have been barely enough to support the battering ram. They ran before they could fry under the arcane net, dropping their swords and fighting one another to get back out the door.

A tell-tale flicker of blue in the hazy morning light caught Anders’s attention, the hair standing up on his arms at the hum of lyrium in the air. They found their reason—and that reason was Fenris.

He darted around and through the line of mages like a cat winding its body past fragile curios atop a mantle. His sword was braced low, angled for defense, a position he didn’t bother to correct when he drew alongside Hawke. His eyes passed over Anders instead, uncloaked, without the hood to hide his features—no longer necessary now that there was nothing to hide.

It was impossible to tell whether the shadow that passed over his eyes was real or merely reflected light from the flames of the keep’s defense, the same shadow that fell over them all together.

‘You should return to the wall,’ Fenris said, eyes leaving Anders’s face.

Hawke’s hold tightened imperceptibly, as if he thought Fenris might attempt to drag them physically apart.

‘Not now, Fenris,’ he said, in a tone that meant _not ever._ Anders didn’t know where his sudden understanding of Hawke had come from, only that it was something that went beyond books, beyond the night they hadn’t shared and the night they finally had. ‘Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine _without_ my help up there. Do you suppose Sebastian fell off his horse? I always wanted to see that—I’ll be sorry if I’ve missed it _now_.’

‘There is more to witness than the humiliation of your enemy.’ Fenris’s eyes fell upon the shattered door, where mages had gathered in a tight ring against a fleet of soldiers that had yet to appear. ‘You will be sorry if you miss _that,_ as well.’

Anders knew this moment well. It was one of the many pockets of peace found within battle—ones he didn’t always have to search out, hiding behind a column or beneath an overturned table to catch his breath and rekindle his stores of magic.

‘Why, Fenris.’ Anders’s voice caught on something ragged; he had to clear his throat before he continued. ‘You fought your way across the battlefield just to make sure we got the best view? And here _I_ thought you didn’t like me.’

‘There is less fighting to be found than there should have been,’ Fenris continued, undaunted as the wild pull of lyrium that surrounded him. ‘Sebastian’s men saw their king’s greatest enemy returned to the fight this morning, so many years after that king took his life. You can smell their fear from the wall itself.’

He drew in a deep breath, as if savoring the imagined scent. Anders tried to smell it too, but all he breathed was the burning—of hot oil, of hot metal, of arcane fire pulsing in the morning air, of lyrium and Fenris’s skin.

‘Creepy,’ Anders said.

‘Yes,’ Fenris replied. ‘ _Creepy._ Not unlike the rest we have witnessed today. Resurrection, some will call it. They are _afraid_ , and that fear may well have dealt the killing blow.’

He adjusted his grip at last but Hawke refused to do the same—his fingers were tight as ever around Anders’s wrist, eyes wild as they circled the courtyard. The mages barricaded the door, patching splintered wood with arcane light; the orders from without came fewer and farther between; and, when the cheer rose from the manned turrets, Jamos’s voice ringing true over the rest, Anders’s blood refused to cool, boiling as hot as the rest of Wildervale.

‘They are retreating,’ Fenris said. ‘Our forces celebrate, and theirs regroups. Wildervale will not always hold, and they will return in greater number, but that is something we have always known. Each victory for its own sake—not the one before and never the one after.’

‘You’ve been spending too much time with Varric,’ Anders told him. He sounded as weak-kneed as he felt. ‘Unless you’re just a mean elf with a penchant for poetry.’

‘Perhaps,’ Fenris replied.

Hawke tugged at Anders’s grip, impatient as a child but frozen at last, no longer carried by his own sense of speed, the impulse of the moment that buoyed him down from the wall. There was a sharp twist of pain on his face instead of pleasure’s ease, the possibility of celebration. Anders looked to him not for gratitude but for pride, for relief, for all the indications of success—and found nothing was there but the pain, in the angle of his mouth and the hard edge of his jaw, just beneath the gray in his beard.

‘So that’s how I died?’ Anders asked. ‘Sebastian Vael…got to me?’

‘Varric never wrote about it.’ Hawke licked his chapped lips, thumb sliding along the cinch beneath the head of his staff. He rubbed it the same way Anders rubbed one of the carvings he kept in his satchel—for good luck—but with a push and a pull and a drag that made Anders wonder if all that luck hadn’t already been rubbed out long ago. He continued to do it while Anders eased his hand out of Hawke’s, touching the back of his wrist where the blood still raced in fear. ‘We were careless. We were still learning. The Free Marches betrayed us. It should have been me—’

‘And you think this should be his victory?’ Anders asked.

He didn’t want to know the answer. But he had to get the whole thing over with.

Hawke looked to him, his eyes finally finding focus. His fingers twitched before they eased, long enough for him to take Anders’s hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Or rather—it already is. It always has been.’

‘Oh,’ Anders said. ‘I see.’

Fenris snorted, soft but close-by, which was enough to make all the other sounds filter back in, one by one, nothing much on their own but too much all together. There were fires here and there, real ones rather than blue-and-green, and bodies, the usual carnage and chaos post-battle, something Anders was ashamed to admit he was accustomed to now—but never all right with, never anything more than dazedly sick at the sight. There were times when he vomited over it and times when he managed not to, but it wasn’t brave and it wasn’t impressive. It wasn’t the mark of a man who was ready for any of it: wardening, revolutionizing, or even just staying in one place long enough to see it change, to see its people change.

‘Try not to do something like that again, would you?’ Hawke said. ‘At least without warning me about it first. What if I’d missed the whole show?’

His face was gentling, Anders noticed—not outright happy, but even Anders hadn’t managed happiness yet.

Respite was only as powerful as its promise, and this was only a pause, with no plan yet for what came next.

Hawke’s words provided a distraction. They were tired and cheery, a flinty edge that made them easy to focus on above all the rest.

‘If I said I wouldn’t, I’d probably be lying,’ Anders replied, the words coming just as easily. ‘Although standing in front of an army like that isn’t the sort of thing you do more than once. Spur of the moment, just to see what it’s like, before you realize it’s _terrible_ and never try it again. After all that, you’d have to be crazy.’

‘So you say _now_ ,’ Fenris said, with an arch of one dark brow.

Hawke cleared his throat, heading toward the wall and the stairs. Everyone else down on the ground looked as dazed as could be expected—all except for Fenris, who was still faintly glowing, as though he thought it was normal to do so. His mouth was hard, his eyes hooded; now and then his skin twitched, whenever the last hint of a spell crossed their paths.

Hawke was smiling, a reckless grin that showed too much teeth. His hand was sweaty but holding it was better than clinging to something miniature, a wood carving, a lucky charm. Anders gave it a squeeze.

‘There is still work to be done,’ Fenris reminded them.

‘Bodies to be cleared away,’ Hawke agreed.

‘—Or healed,’ Anders added, though he was never the outrageously positive one, not unless he was joking.

There was a time when it seemed Hawke would say more, on the verge of asking something. Then, he kissed the corner of Anders’s mouth instead, beard scraping stubble, brow on brow. ‘You have a great deal to explain, as always,’ he said, with the audacity to sound fond instead of angry, sadness beneath the affection, but affection itself was always that fragile, on the verge of becoming misery at any moment.

Anders touched his face, fingers against his cheek, thumb against his chin, bristling hair rough on his fingertips, with smooth skin hidden in the spaces between.

‘I told you I’d stay,’ he said. ‘…More or less, anyway.’

‘I have trouble believing the good stories,’ Hawke replied. ‘Not half as much trouble as Wildervale will have believing all of _this_ , though.’

‘Perhaps we shall have to ask Varric to write about it.’ Fenris cleared his throat again, gesturing—to the keep, to the business at hand, to what needed mending, to the door they’d have to rebuild and the battering ram they’d suddenly acquired, the younger mages ruddy and flushed and gathering close. People were already staring. Soon, once they stopped caring about the things that really mattered—their lives, their friends, their family—they were going to start asking questions. Anders just hoped there weren’t candles.

Flower garlands might not be too terrible.

‘No one respects a dwarf when he says he’s got writer’s block,’ Varric said, ambling up behind them with Bianca in his arms. If he was surprised to see Anders—surprised by anything he’d done, surprised by their victory or surprised by how little it meant in the end—it didn’t show. Instead, his expression was steady as ever, brown eyes bright with that wicked old sparkle beneath a dark streak of soot across his brow. Anders waited for a cheer, a dwarven platitude, words somber or cheeky or downright lewd, but nothing greeted him. Someone who took such pride in his own stories would never want to admit he’d been taken by someone else’s twist halfway into the final act. Varric’s artistic integrity might never recover and it was all Anders’s fault. ‘Never mind; and don’t waste your breath on apologies, elf. I think I feel the fog beginning to clear at last.’

He gestured through the air with his blunt fingers while Anders gripped Hawke’s hand tight. All he could see was smoke curling, Varric parting the mists, just like a _somniari_ in the secret-most dreaming of private night.

‘No need to be dramatic, Varric,’ Anders said.

Varric snorted. ‘Are you kidding, Blondie?’ he replied. ‘There’s _always_ need—and now, more than ever.’

*

It took two weeks for Wildervale to return to the barest semblance of its old glory, the way it’d looked when Anders first arrived. Their casualties were few, with a great deal more wounded than killed—and there was no time to mourn their loss when there were others, those still breathing, who needed a healer’s help more than the dead needed his pity. Anders spent long days and sweaty nights in the clinic tending to burns and broken limbs, bruised shield-arms and deep wounds where Starkhaven bowmen had pierced their defenses. It was easier to breathe without the heavy wool of Hawke’s cowl around his head—but apart from the crowded beds, there was now a crowd of daily onlookers, friends and well-wishers packed so tightly into the small space that the air felt just as close as ever.

Some brought tokens of their gratitude while others wanted only to confirm with their own eyes what their friends and family had already told them.

Anders could turn neither away, patients and gawkers alike. It was all part of staying—facing the consequences of his actions, whatever those might be—though he did tell them to keep back, a selfish requirement that benefited others as much as it benefited Anders himself.

Rebuilding was sweaty work. There was nothing for Wildervale’s occupants to do in the meantime but talk to their neighbors, reliving the highlights of a siege they’d imagined might be their last. Every way Anders turned, down the keep’s stone corridor or through a winding dirt road behind the smithy, excited whispers filled all the spaces once claimed by chittering darkspawn. _Anders is back,_ they liked to say, as though it meant everything, and—Anders’s favorite— _I bet Sebastian thinks twice before turning his sights to Wildervale again._

Sometimes Anders turned up his cowl and joined in, a few mentions of choir boy to realy get the blood pumping. That was a part of healing, too; though this was Anders’s second successful siege, the aftermath much the same as anywhere else, he still thought of himself more as a mender of broken bones than of battered walls.

Varric’s working title for the tale was _The Healer Returned_ , admitting at last that he might deign to come out of retirement to pen one final epilogue to his most popular work.

‘Who am I to stand in the way of what the people want, Blondie?’ Varric had said.

‘Funny,’ Anders had replied. ‘That’s just what I thought—right before I tore off Hawke’s cloak.’

Anders could hear snippets of the story being passed around from the clinic’s open windows. There were still candles burning beneath the statue, lumpy red celebration tallows mixed with the white, and a crowd of young apprentices gathered there daily to hear Varric embellish the details he’d divulged only the day before.

‘There he stood, cloak flapping in the breeze on the eastern wall,’ Varric obliged, while Anders leaned against the windowsill, unraveling a tangled bit of bandage between his fingers. ‘King Sebastian’s greatest warhorse reared, scenting something in the air—animals always have a sense for when something’s off, you know, being so much smarter than the _kings_ who own them. Somehow—don’t ask me how; I don’t like to presume—the healer knew it was his moment. Then or never again, as the saying goes. So he stood high above a brazier, lighting its contents with one hand before throwing his hood off with the other. Below, it was as though all of Starkhaven could see the face of their enemy, wreathed by oil-bright flames. ‘Anders!’ they shouted, and an answering cry came from our side of the wall: ‘Anders!’’

Varric was good—so good that he managed to give Anders gooseflesh all over his bare arms, underneath his mended belt, up and down his aching back. Even if he’d been there—even if he knew all the places Varric chose to employ, liberally, his artistic license—he couldn’t find it in his heart to correct the fiction to the facts because the facts already felt like fiction.

Anders may have started this movement—in another life, as another man—but now it belonged to everyone. Who was he to say what their hero had done at dawn on the wall? One account didn’t amount to much in the face of dozens, what they’d seen with their own eyes and what they hadn’t seen and what they’d never forget.

No one questioned it. No one wanted to. They’d needed him and so he came—and sometimes a story was that simple.

Life itself was even simpler.

Better than that, there were flower garlands, white lilies strung together by the blacksmith’s pretty mage daughter. She laid them around Anders’s neck while he healed her broken ankle—she got it, she explained, running to the wall the moment she heard the healer’s voice—and Ander didn’t even mind the cloying scent mixed with the spice of elfroot and the tang of blood, a particularly nauseating combination.

Later, Hawke rubbed the waxy petals between his thumb and index finger, drawing the bouquet over Anders’s head—just so he wouldn’t crush it between their bodies when he reeled Anders in for a kiss.

Despite the time they spent apart, Hawke rebuilding the wall and Anders rebuilding the people within the wall, they managed to find one another at the end of the day, however late that end came. All Anders had to do was look up in the dining hall and meet Hawke’s eyes over a dozen restless heads, belonging to a dozen restless people, each clamoring to be the one to give Anders their extra bread or the best cut of meat.

‘They’re trying to fatten you up so you match the statue,’ Hawke said one night, tossing one of Anders’s extra rolls from hand to hand. It disappeared somewhere in the air near his elbow and he grinned, proud of himself—like the simple magic tricks he used to impress the baker’s children would work on a seasoned mage like Anders. ‘The you they remember was…thicker around the middle.’

Anders affected a scandalized gasp, settling in at Hawke’s side on the couch. ‘Jealousy is _so_ unbecoming,’ he replied, fingers at his waist, above the ruined line of his leather belt. ‘I know it must be difficult grappling with my sudden popularity—with no longer being the most important mage in all of Wildervale—but I didn’t ask to be cursed with a loveable nature. No one ever does.’

He plucked the roll from its hiding place, pinned between Hawke’s shoulder and the upholstery. When Hawke opened his mouth to protest, Anders slid into his lap.

‘I won’t tell the children,’ he murmured, close against the curved shell of Hawke’s ear. Then there was no more time for joking as Hawke’s arms wrapped around him, tipping their bodies down to the touch.

Sometimes, when Hawke looked his way, there were shadows in his gaze—but they weren’t the sort that wreathed him once, expecting a certain man and finding another in his place. These were personal shadows, changed shadows, the worries Hawke refused to voice—like whether or not he deserved to keep a man who’d come through an Eluvian and if they wouldn’t regret all their petty choices someday.

Anders could only accept the worries with the joys, because no matter their impositions, they were _his_. No one else could weather them, not even a handsome statue with a barrel chest and a too-long nose.

In the bed they shared, Hawke wasn’t reliving anything. He was reminding himself, relearning a person, mending and healing under Anders’s touch. And when he took Anders by the hand at the end of a long day or pressed himself warm against Anders’s back at the end of a long night, it was because they wanted each other.

Despite history—or maybe because of it—neither of them longed for another person, or for another place.

When Anders slept, it was deep and untroubled, with no visions of vengeful kings from Starkhaven riding him down and no questing _somniari_ waiting to meet him between the braced feet of a popular statue. He woke and slept and ate and healed and bathed and breathed—and it all happened naturally enough that he trusted and believed in it.

Anders belonged there, not because it was where he’d been born, but because it was where he was most needed.

The life of a healer was never pretty; Anders was used to being called this way and that, never sleeping longer than the most restless of his patients. When he rolled over in the night he sometimes elbowed Hawke in the belly; Hawke didn’t stir at the indignity of it all, not even after he huffed or groaned, in a contented, happy show of pain. He had a lot of lost sleep to catch up on, hard work to manage during the day, new mages pouring in past the Orlesian border and from the southernmost reaches of the Free Marches—even those who’d fled Starkhaven, with news of other townships offering assistance and aid. They were fortifying themselves, and some wanted to travel all the way to Wildervale just to say they had.

Starkhaven was always a threat, and nothing and everything had changed.

Time passed quickly, even more so because there was so much to do, but eventually Anders knew all the questions would override the awe and admiration, the praise he enjoyed all the way up until it overwhelmed his ego. Then, it made him feel smaller than one of the dust-motes in Hawke’s furred pauldrons.

‘You don’t have to feel anything about it, you know,’ Varric told him over supper. ‘But if you _did_ feel something…you know you can always tell me about it.’

It was just the two of them, as it so often was these days; Hawke was still busy, overseeing the work on the walls, meeting with his spies, planning some new and dangerous trip along the Minanter to harry Sebastian’s troops even more than they were harried already. Now that they were weak, now that morale was low and confusion high, it was the perfect time to break more of Starkhaven’s captive mages free.

In the meantime, Anders had the clinic to think about, and no one wanted to risk him falling to Sebastian again—least of all Anders himself.

The best they could hope to do was learn from history; there was no rule in any book that insisted they had to repeat it just because everyone else fell prey to the same mistakes.

‘Who said I was feeling anything?’ Anders asked. ‘I don’t feel while I’m eating, Varric. I don’t even think. I certainly don’t talk, because that would be rude, only now you’ve made me—and you’ve only yourself to blame.’

‘I blame myself for a lot of things,’ Varric admitted. ‘Like introducing Hawke to that guy in the first place, for starters.’

Anders scraped the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. The sound echoed through the room but neither of them winced, too used to each other to be awkward, too comfortable with each other to admit awkwardness might exist. ‘Varric, _don’t_ get nostalgic over dinner. As your healer, I feel obligated to inform you that reminiscing is terrible for your digestion.’

‘ _Come on_ ,’ Varric said. ‘You can’t tell me you don’t have _some_ insight, not after everything. It’s just that I’m having trouble wrapping the whole thing up—the build-up’s fine, maybe too much of it, and the action’s my specialty, but the ending… It’s just not coming to me.’

‘I’m a mage, Varric,’ Anders told him, ‘not a _miracle_ worker.’

‘Oh, but you are.’ Varric had fresh ink-stains on his fingertips, a few new gray hairs amidst the gold on his chest. He didn’t seem unhappy, even if they were all more nervous about everything than they let on, not giving themselves time to think much less ask the important questions. But Varric was still working his way through the whole thing, putting it down on paper to sort the mess out into something that made sense from start to finish. ‘I’d say that stunt up on the ramparts was two-thirds miracle, in fact.’

‘And the other third?’ Anders asked.

‘And the other third nug-brained stupidity of the highest caliber,’ Varric replied.

Anders grinned and Varric chuckled, both of them weary, Varric’s expression sharp and lean. He was looking for answers and thought Anders had them, not the other way around.

But the truth was Anders had no idea what he was feeling. When he lay down in bed and Hawke joined him he felt warm; when children followed him in the streets he felt nervous; when someone recovered better than he’d hoped he felt good; when someone didn’t, he felt frustrated. It was the same set of feelings as ever, just aged a bit, and moved to a different setting, a brand new place.

He hadn’t changed but he wasn’t the same—just like Wildervale and just like Hawke.

Explaining that wasn’t going to be easy; if he didn’t try, Varric would never let him hear the end of it. He’d make something up, something that sounded good but wasn’t right, while at the same time Anders thought it might be better if no one ever knew the truth. _It was an accident_ didn’t sound as good as _it was fate_ , and it wouldn’t mean as much to all the people who needed to find meaning in it.

‘I feel…lucky,’ Anders said finally. ‘And not lucky at the same time. And also stupid for not going with Feynriel to Arlathan. But…’

‘But…you like the clinic?’ Varric supplied.

‘But I like the clinic,’ Anders confirmed. ‘I _don’t_ like mystical items of untold power that may or may not return me to somewhere it happens to think I should be. And it’s not as though I can leave _now_ , anyway; Keran will have to pretend to be Anders to keep up morale and he doesn’t have the right nose for it, not to mention the accent’s all wrong. He’d embarrass himself and we can’t have _that_ happening, now can we?’

‘Just so long as you’re not doing it out of charity,’ Varric said.

Anders folded his hands on the table. When he chuckled, he sounded like he’d been spending too much time with a dwarf—which, of course, he had. ‘You don’t ever have to worry about _that_ with _me_.’

Varric seemed satisfied by the explanation, pursing his lips in a low whistle. ‘Guess it might be nice if you stuck around for a while,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘You came back. That’s what matters. Not all the hows.’

‘Or the whos, the whats, and the whys,’ Anders agreed.

It was an old line, but it had new meaning.


	13. EPILOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some many years later.

**EPILOGUE**

They rose early from their bedrolls, the chill in the air seeping through the canvas walls of the tent and making it impossible for any man to sleep until a decent hour. Hawke’s back made a noise like old logs splitting down the center; Anders paused in dressing to lay his hands against the swollen joints, healing magic flickering from his palm in warm, brief lashes.

‘I had a letter from Varric last night,’ Hawke said, while Anders studied the three familiar freckles clustered around the nape of his neck. ‘It said we’re welcome to try and relive the glory of our nug-brained youths without him, thank you very much. He sends his regards, but he’s built a rather _comfortable_ life for himself up in Tantervale—gold-plated dinnerware and cute dwarven serving girls. What _must_ Bianca think?’

‘I’m sure she likes all the braided rugs,’ Anders replied, rolling Hawke’s shirt down once he’d finished, tucking it into the waist of his trousers. ‘When you put it like that, I wish _we’d_ moved to Tantervale. It’s so much closer to Antiva…’

‘Last I heard, Antiva was infested with Crows, not darkspawn.’ Hawke needed a hand-up to stand, leaning on his staff as though it was as much an old man’s cane as a symbol of arcane power. These days, Anders was hard pressed to tell which held more magic. ‘But—easy there—I’m sure if you _wanted,_ we could look for a Deep Roads entrance further north.’

‘And miss seeing those rock wraiths Varric wrote about?’ Anders asked. ‘Not on your life. Better crushing stone than slimy tentacles, I always say.’

He’d known it was coming for two years now, a short period of time considering almost twenty had come before it. They’d been happy years, though they weren’t peaceful; he’d met the famous Rivaini pirate Isabela during the summer they’d captured Tantervale for the mages and even now, when he closed his eyes, he could still see her standing on the southern watchtower, one eye to a spyglass with the wind in her hair. She’d flirted mercilessly with Hawke, then endeared herself by flirting mercilessly with Anders as well.

‘I _might_ use an Eluvian myself if it meant I’d get to show up brimming with youth and vitality, putting all my friends to shame,’ Isabela had said, rubbing their shoulders together affectionately, like a friendly cat. ‘Some people have all the luck.’

‘And some people steal the rest,’ Hawke had replied, with a knowing glance in her direction.

Anders had met Merrill, too, less than a year after that, with a passel of young elves from Arlathan, helping to defend Tantervale against another templar invasion. ‘Do you know,’ she’d said, ‘I never kept the mirror. After all that time chasing after it—trying to build something—I smashed it in the end. With a big rock, and buried all the pieces in the ground. I didn’t imagine they might grow anything—more little mirrors. No; it doesn’t work that way, does it? So I wouldn’t have been able to help—though that _was_ a strange letter Varric sent me. One of my favorites.’

She wasn’t the sort for flirting—and neither was Aveline, a terrifying ginger with a well-meaning husband and one less well-meaning daughter, whom Hawke admitted liked him only half as much as she _loved_ Isabela.

‘But then,’ he’d added, with a wink, ‘Aveline always felt the same way.’

Anders had met Sebastian, too, in a manner of speaking, seeing him at a distance from atop a high wall, and that was all of them, save for those who were lost to them forever: Hawke’s brother and sister, his mother, Karl, the house-dwarves they never saw again after they headed to Orlais. They were the same people they’d always been and different people, just like Anders. They lived their separate lives and came together now and then, and the passing years were the right ones, a sacrifice Anders never expected to make and prices he never expected to pay, rewards he never expected to reap.

There was the winter they nearly lost Fenris; there was the spring Varric chose to move away. There was the summer Keran left for Tevinter—Feynriel needed a personal bodyguard and Hawke needed more contacts in the Imperium—and the autumn the Circle in Starkhaven fell, Hawke crouched by the fire when the news reached them, passing his cracked palm in front of his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ he’d told Anders.

‘Stop; you’ll make me blush, and then I’ll get all splotchy like Keran,’ Anders had replied.

They were both crying.

It wasn’t any surprise the time had passed. It had always been meant to.

Anders wiped at something hard stuck in the corner of his eye, a bit of sleep from the night before. Hawke was packing provisions in a red kerchief, his initials sewn faded into one of the corners. There were letters to leave and couriers to meet with and the day was bright for the season, another autumn, one of many, the air wet before an evening rain.

It wasn’t evening yet.

Anders had never wanted to do this alone—he’d never wanted to do anything alone. But one of the hardest things was finding the right person to share a life with, one who wouldn’t laugh when he found his first gray hair sneaking in at the temple, trying to go unnoticed, as insidious as a rogue templar amongst a city of free mages.

Hawke was all gray now and Anders all out of ways to tease him about it. There was a song drumming from the deep, almost gentle, and Anders supposed he would have found it frightening if Hawke hadn’t begun to whistle.

‘Old song from the Hanged Man,’ Hawke explained. ‘Varric used to sing it to Bianca. There I’d be, knee-deep in street-gang blood, and Varric would be _whistling_. Made a man feel like he’d finally come home.’

‘You’ve had the strangest friends,’ Anders replied.

Hawke tied their lunch-sack together with a bit of red cloth Fenris left with them—‘Farewell, my friend,’ he said, and like all elves, he still seemed youthful, or ageless, or timeless, or merely perverse—and they left before they had to say goodbye to anyone else, both of them wearing cowls over their faces.

‘I just hope there aren’t tentacles,’ Anders said, his slow pace neither eager nor reluctant, simply matching Hawke’s speed. He could hear Hawke breathing heavily, even above the rhythm that dogged his heels: blades on burnt rock, darkness proud and sweet.

‘Watch your head,’ Hawke added.

They ducked below the rocky outcropping, an entrance to the cavern no more obvious than a hidden door in the back of a keep. It was the perfect way to flee a siege. The shale shifted and slid overhead and Anders finally removed the cowl, flicking it back over his shoulders, feeling damp air on his cheeks.

The ground trembled beneath their feet like an unsteady wagon drawn by a stubborn ox, as though they were about to embark on an uncomfortable journey. A carved wooden cat dangled at Anders’s side; he should have left it behind, not to be lost and devoured by the deep, the same way he’d left Ser Pounce-a-lot in Vigil’s Keep so many years ago.

‘I’ve missed fighting darkspawn,’ Hawke said.

‘I haven’t,’ Anders replied.

He shouldn’t have been surprised at the way a place lingered in the blood no matter how many years you spent avoiding it. The deeper they traveled, the more Anders felt like he’d only just stepped out of Kal’Hirol, sickly-soft flesh lining the cave walls and pointy childer-feet scrabbling against rock. He had Hawke at his side where there’d once been Nathaniel and Sigrun, the Warden-Commander scouting tirelessly ahead—but if Anders closed his eyes, he almost thought he could hear Oghren’s lusty belches echoing from behind the helmet he wore, the clang of his battle-axe on bone and stone alike.

Anders could even imagine the smell: tart yet mingled with the sweet scent of rot just beneath. Or maybe that was the Deep Roads themselves—one thaig just a stone’s throw from another, everything connected by a magic simpler and more powerful than the reflections of an Eluvian, all their roads leading to the same place.

‘You’re so quiet, Anders,’ Hawke said. ‘Maybe I should take up whistling like Varric. Don’t tell me it’s the voices in your head—why is it _always_ that excuse?’

‘You knew what you were getting into,’ Anders reminded him.

Hawke huffed, a child’s sulking breath. ‘Did I? Sometimes I wonder.’

A flicker of lyrium light bouncing off glass caught Anders’s attention from the end of a winding corridor, its surface tarnished and blackened with age. Only a streak of mirror-bright clarity remained, something polished beneath the grime, and Anders stepped closer on impulse while Hawke remained at his back, ever-watchful for an unannounced ambush—even if that was the plan all along, he still felt compelled to guard against it, to maintain the pretense of winning the fight.

Anders squinted. His reflection held none of the wrinkles he’d collected over the years, and in it his hair was blond as ever, no longer salted with thick streaks of gray. Hawke behind him was fuzzy, indistinct, as pale as the shadow of a thaig-trapped ghost. Anders poked at his face, the warm flesh and the unavoidable wrinkles, then poked the mirror. Its glossy surface rippled beneath his touch, giving way like an old man’s sagging cheek.

‘That wasn’t here the last time I came,’ Hawke said.

‘Some people have all the luck,’ Anders replied.

 **END**


End file.
